1. Senior Video Final Exam
IntroductionAs promised, here is your long awaited senior video final exam. This is designed to give you a chance to make a final, lasting impression on AHS and get a grade in the process. This project caters to you and your family as you prepare to start the next phase of your life. The following is a list of criteria and objectives. Good luck and have fun!
Objectives
As a result of participating in this project, the student will be able to…
1. Purposefully reflect on his/her high school experience
2. Effectively use technology to create a video retrospective
3. Reflect on his/her growth and maturation using interviews with parents, friends, loved ones, teachers, etc.
4. Create a tangible final product
5. Illustrate the different phases of life from which he/she has “graduated”
Criteria and Scoring
1. The video should be 10 minutes for an individual project, 16 minutes for a group of two, and 20 minutes for a group of three. Should you choose a group project, your stories need to complement each other in some way.
2. What most interests me about the video is you. I want to know as much about you as possible. Include references to your beginnings, struggles, triumphs, maturation, future plans, etc.
3. You MUST include at least one parent or guardian.
4. You MUST have a unified purpose and/or narrative, much like any of the papers you’ve written this year.
5. You MUST include clips from every phase of your life.
6. You MUST include yourself actually doing something (sports, working, acting, drawing, etc.)
7. You MUST include interviews with at least three other people (non-family) who have made an impression on you.
8. You MUST include some sort of order represented through chronology or theme.
9. You MUST include smooth transitions. Please don’t walk around aimlessly and film everything. Like a paper, move from one part of your video to the next with transitions (fades, music, announcements, etc.)
10. You MUST include between 4-6 different locations that are relevant and reflective as well as explained.
11. Provide me with a final product compatible with my VCR or DVD player
12. Hand in the film and this packet on the due date
13. As is the case with any project of this sort, my biggest concern is crossing the line into indecency. If you plan on bringing your camera to a party, prom weekend, etc. you need only to exercise this rule: If your parents wouldn’t want to see it, neither would I. Understand that including alcohol, drugs, violence, or other inappropriate action in the video will result in failure and a referral to the administration and to your parents. I reserve the right to fail any video I deem inappropriate, disrespectful, or in direct violation of the aforementioned rules. We’ve built a mutual respect during the course of the year, so consider that before putting us both in a situation from which there is only way to extricate ourselves.
Suggestions
1. Make your parent interview meaningful. It doesn’t have to be scripted but it should be something on which you look back with pride in the years to come.
2. Make the video a documentary. In other words, tell stories of your youth, visit people you care about, go back to places you haven’t been in years, allow yourself to enjoy making the video as well as watching it. Edit the film in such a way that it includes sit down interviews and live-action shots.
3. Consider candid conversations, rehearsed bits, parties, vacations, the workplace, first loves, last loves, true confessions, athletics, drama, anything school related, etc.
4. Consider using pictures to create a storyboard of your life.
5. We aren’t interested in your house, your room, your car, etc.
6. Don’t overact or put on a show using some character who is not the person I’ve come to know. This is a reality show!
7. Sacrifice a little embarrassment and laugh at yourself.
8. Please give each group member equal time. It’s immediately obvious when one or more members aren’t working as hard as the others.
9. Don’t spend too much time on any one part of the video (i.e. your boyfriend/girlfriend, your work, a party, etc.)
The Camera
1. Be as steady as possible
2. Have the subject of the shot move….not the camera
3. Avoid excessive zooming and unzooming
4. SPEAK UP!! Especially when you’re outside
5. Charge your batteries so you don’t cut yourself off in the middle of a profound moment
6. Avoid walking while the camera is running. If you want to move, pause the recording and move
7. USE A FRESH TAPE!! I don’t want to see twenty minutes of your dance recital or Little League game in the middle!
And Finally…
This is your final exam!! Failure to turn in your video on the due date will result in a grade of 0%. Any finals handed to me after the due date will be returned to you immediately.
Videos are due June 1.
2. Autobiography Final Exam
For this option, I’d like you to put together a high school autobiography. The narrative should only include your four years of high school and should be based on your growth, maturation, and self-reflection. In other words, I do not want a dissertation on everything that happened to you during your high school career; instead, I’d ask that you consider your story as part of a larger whole, as based on a predetermined thematic connection, or as a written “mirror image” of your time in high school.
Tips for getting started:
1. Feel free to include dialogue even if it’s only loosely based on actual conversations.
2. Much like the senior video, I’d like you to weave in those people who served as your greatest mentors (parents, teachers, etc.), your friends and confidants, and even your enemies.
3. Your struggles should be as catalogued as your triumphs. You can approach this from a purely academic perspective, but I think a truer account of your life should include a more personal perspective as well.
4. Because this exam is based on self-reflection, you’re going to have to really sit down and think about your life, which, for some people, isn’t easy. It may be useful to talk to other people whose time with you can better represent your growth than your time spent alone.
5. If you feel compelled to get creative, I’ll allow this to be written in such fashion. For instance, maybe you’d consider writing your own autobiography as a ghost writer, so the narrative would be in the third person even though we both know you wrote it. Maybe you’d consider writing it like an epistolary novel (The Perks of Being A Wallflower) in the form of letters, diary entries, or blogs. Such decisions need to be cleared by me.
Logistics
1. The paper needs to be at least six pages long, double spaced, in 12 pt. Times New Roman font.
2. The paper needs an effective title (not “My Story” or some other uninventive title) which should be centered and underlined on the first page.
3. Writers should observe common writing conventions, grammar rules, and mechanical nuances that were taught during the course of the year.
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