Metacognition: Mashup

I'm not going to lie--when I first heard about this project, I was really, really not looking forward to it. I saw it as yet another pointless assignment that makes no sense and probably won't pertain to anything we're actually doing unless we totally bullshit every "connection" we find between our "Jane Eyre" sources and the media sources. I was dreading it. I despised it. I didn't even know what it was.

My opinion of the project got slightly better after we went over what we were actually supposed to do, but I still wasn't feeling it. I absentmindedly pondered writing essays, creating a Prezi doc, or doing a poster, but none of them sounded terribly exciting.

However, my inspiration comes to me from the strangest places. That night as I watched Nostalgia Critic, an online movie critic who reviews bad old movies, and one of the funniest and best critics I've ever had the pleasure of watching, Inspiration came to me in this form:

At this point, I realized that I could have a lot of fun with this assignment because I could play to my strength: movies and video. The next day I paired up with Ruhi and Sebastian, and the adventure began.

Despite the Critic's inspirational speech, things still went terribly wrong at first. We were pretty disorganized: one of us was traveling, one of us had rehearsals, one of us had tech, one of us got sick, one of us had plans, one of us was going to visit the Pope--the list goes on and on. We were all busy and didn't really know how to collaborate with each other. We only really had five days too, which is way too short to actually do a large in-depth project with three people. Eventually, Monday rolled around and we still didn't know what we were doing. 

So, we decided to break the group up partially, as our schedules just wouldn't work with each other. And then there were two days left. On Tuesday, my partner and I met at my house and planned everything out and made a flow chart and everything until we both had to leave for various rehearsals. We were still disorganized, but at least we had a plan--a glorious plan.

We essentially decided to make a video mashup highlighting the effect of individualism on the status quo. And when you hear status quo, what do you think of? THAT'S RIGHT: HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL.

From there, we jam packed that thing with every pop culture reference, every movie, every TV show, and every quote that we could think of that expressed that theme. There were a surprising amount of them--they show up everywhere.

We used clips from the Critic's video, a scene from "Wreck It Ralph", some Harry Potter, and even some Doctor Who. We interweaved them with our own comments, "Jane Eyre" stuff, and even "King Lear" clips. It was like skipping down Memory Lane surrounded by singing flowers, cartoon characters, and Jane Eyre--it was freaking awesome. We filmed all our original stuff Wednesday morning and everything looked wonderful.

Then, the Fire Nation attacked things came up and my partner and I couldn't finish the project together because we were both at rehearsal until late Wednesday night. I worked and worked on my laptop, editing clips together, downloading files, and piecing all of our hard work together; I seriously operated a spotlight with one hand and video-edited with the other. I started to run into problems: the school network was slow and I couldn't torrent any videos, files were too large; the screen was freezing. Alas, it was too late, and 9 O'clock flew by before I even registered that the thing was due. I texted my partner, who in turn emailed Mr. Allen, and I resigned myself to an I-am-staying-up-til-the-wee-hours-of-the-morning-because-shit-needs-to-get-done night. 

I got home at ten and worked non-stop until one in the morning. I not only recorded the Jane Eyre quotes, but I also spliced scenes from "Balto" with dis-attached audio and attempted to make a source page. I felt terrible. I finally uploaded the thing at about two in the morning, and then finished my other homework by four. It was not a fun day. No me gusta. 

So, yeah, the work was awful. We stayed up forever working on it, the thing wouldn't upload for like an hour, it was a pain trying to make our schedules work, and the time limit didn't help. But the finished product was something to be proud of, in my opinion. It was funny at all the right times, it had some of our favorite movies and videos in it, and it really fit with the theme. I think we succeeded in doing what we tried to do, and that's all I could hope for at this point. 

I really did do a 180º turn around with this project. I really enjoyed working with my partner, and I think that we made something great.

GIFS of the Day