This quarter we read “Anne Frank, the Diary of a Young Girl” in English class. When we finished reading the book we had to do a project. We could choose between 2 options. The first one was that you had to design a memorial, and the second one was to make a movie that would illustrate a lesson that Anne Frank taught us through her diary. My group chose the second option.
In this project every one had to illustrate the lesson using 3 things, which were symbols, images and sounds, and if we wanted to, a fourth one, text. We used lots of pictures, each representing an idea. For example we had a picture of barbed wire which represented being excluded from the outside world. Pictures of the 2nd World War, the Holocaust and the soldiers involved in it were also used to show that the war wasn’t something that happened just because of the Nazis. Everybody was involved and underwent a complex change following the Pyramid of Hate, which eventually led to the war, and the Holocaust.
We incorporated sound into the movie by having the song It Ends Tonight by The All-American Rejects play throughout the movie to help with the emotion and messages trying to be implicated to the audience. Another tool that we used to improve on the aspect of sound was the sound recorder of the computer, and by having Emma read out quotes from the diary, it sounds as if Anne herself was in the room telling you her ideals.
These sounds, images and symbols expressed a meaning that when combined, made perfect sense together! The pictures, sounds and symbols put together described the story of how, through the battles, the wars, the deaths and unpleasantness, Anne Frank kept to her ideals and most of all, tried to keep optimistic during the times of despair, which dominated the experiences that she went through.
We think that however rock-like the song is, it fits the theme of Anne Frank because the song starts off with a slow, soft beat, whereas when the message of optimism is portrayed at the end, the whole song is in full-swing with all the guitars strumming, drums clashing and vocal chords working themselves. The lyrics also have a meaning of their own, which will be mentioned later on. One important ESLR that we used was Effective Communicator because we demonstrated our creative talents to convey ideas and because we utilized technology as a tool for communication! In our own words this means that we used the computer and its programs to help us communicate and reach other people in a different way. Some proof of this is that we made sure that our movie contained a message: the lesson from Anne, which is that it is good to keep having hope in all kinds of situations just like she did.
The most vibrant trait of our movie was definitely images, since we can’t successfully make a movie without images or videos. In our movie, we showed many different images from WWII, each with its own significance. There were parts about The Holocaust, the Hiroshima Bombing, and The Final Solution etc. Watching these old pictures will make the viewers think back towards the war and all the sufferings that all the people back then had to endure. It would give them time to contemplate upon how lucky they are to be living decades after the war and also to pay respect to the lost souls. Also in the latter parts of the movie, we showed images of Anne Frank with her family, her diary, and the seven other people living in the same house. It gave a very brief story about Anne’s life so that the audience would understand what she had to go through at such a delicate age.
A picture can speak a thousand words, but music can whisper a million. A movie isn’t completed without supporting music that adds to the emotion. For this particular project, we chose a song from The All American Rejects- It Ends Tonight. Though it may be a little too rocky at some parts, it has a nice slow start accompanied with a steady uprising. This would help build up the intensity in some parts as needed. This song also had a few vivid lyrics that really represented the pain of the war. During the song, these words “It Ends Tonight” were being repeated over and over again. The song could be wanting for something bad to stop, such as the war. It could also represent that the damage has already been done, and the only hope is to end the war. A major challenge of exploring sound was taken into consideration in our project. We took a creative risk and tried to use our voices to read out Anne’s quote to add the extra effect of involvement to the audience. It was an extremely risky task, but with the help of technology it was successful. This act increased the creativity of our project and therefore will make a bigger impact on our audience.
Though text may not seem too important in this visual display, it was in ours. We communicated most our thoughts through text and images, without this essential element, our main purpose of hope could not be communicated.
Last but not least, the astounding element of symbols. Symbols play an immense part in this project, because each different symbol represents something different, which needs their own time to be thought about and analyzed. In our project, we had symbols of the Star of David, barbed wires and the concentration camp tattoos. These symbols would help the audience understand the inequality towards the Jews, as they were not considered human to the Nazis. Other important symbols were Anne Frank’s inspiring quotes, which will help to enlighten the audience of her high hopes and positive outlook on nature during these tough times.
The first thing from the movie that comes up is text saying World War II, which is quite an ambiguous topic. Along the movie, the topics get more and more specific from, World War II, The Holocaust, Anne Frank and finally to her message of optimism. In the beginning, we think that the pictures of the war will slowly, but surely put the viewers into a somber, sensitive mood, calming their emotions and preparing them for the rest of the slideshow. The pictures of the Holocaust, tattoos and dead bodies will ultimately create an aura of sadness around the audience. That is what we are hoping to do for the first part of the movie.
Without music or some form of sound, just having the pictures shown to you would be bland, so we chose a song that we thought fit the right mood we were trying to convey. The song that we used is called It Ends Tonight performed by The All-American Rejects. The song starts off with soft piano chords, chords and notes that subtly repel each other and sound slightly unnatural when played in unison so we thought that those notes could represent how the Nazis and the Jews didn’t really get along, how they never could. The crescendo in the song could represent how the neglected hate built up and resulted in World War II.
When the subject of Anne Frank comes up, pictures and quotes from her diary are brought into the movie. We think that the quotes will really bring out her optimism towards the world. The fact that we have Emma voicing Anne’s thoughts is complete genius compared to having the quotes flash past the screen unnoticed, because Emma’s sound clips take it up to a whole new level where people are actually forced to take note of the quote and think about it. At this part, the song’s volume and intensity also rises where the voice, electric guitars, drums and all the other instruments are joined together on a much louder scale, which we hope will subconsciously bring people to a more energetic and hopeful mood, if combined with the quotes.
Another great aspect of the whole movie brought together is how the different parts also blend into one to finally also exit as one. The movie fades out as the last chord of the guitar fades out.
At the end of the project, we were proud of what we had accomplished, the movie and the write-up put together was one project that did not disappoint us. Although, at times we did not have very good co-ordination and organization because we missed some meetings, we still did well due to the fact that we all wanted to receive a good grade for this project. All the members of the group obviously put time and effort into the project, which is reflected upon on the movie and in this write-up. We wouldn’t give ourselves a very good mark for our organization, but we still did well because we planned out the movie, the write-up and who was doing which part of the project. For the rest of the project, the movie and the write-up, we would give ourselves a good grade that we thought we really did deserve. This movie will make people think twice about their own attitude and will leave them in a very hopeful kind of daze.
The ESLR that we used the most in this project would most probably be the Effective Communicator. Just by doing this project, we have already achieved most of the major points of this ESLR. One major bullet point that we have accomplished was demonstrating our creative talents to convey ideas. We performed this by taking a risk and trying out new methods to make our movie more effective on our audience. We used Emma’s voice to read out some of Anne Franks quotes while the text is being shown on screen. We believe that the combination of text and voice will impact the audience more than just text itself. This example could also show that we are Self- Directed Learners, because we tried to take a creative risk to develop an untried idea. Another bullet point that we achieved from being Effective Communicators was that we collaborated with each other in an appropriate learning situation to achieve a group goal. Since all of us were Extroverts, we each had different ideas and ways that we wanted the final project to turn out. We had a few long discussions on certain decisions to make, but in the end we worked together and came up with a solution that accompanied each of our opinions.
We were also Academic Achievers in this project; each of us demonstrated the ability to work both independently and collaboratively. Every single one of us worked tremendously well independently because we all got our assigned tasks completed with excellence. We also worked fairly well collaboratively. As I have said before, we each had different ideas and conspiracies but we managed to intertwine each other’s ideas evident in the final product.
Another ESLR that we used a great deal was Critical Thinking. During the production of the movie, we had some difficulties in adding Emma’s voice into the movie because Windows Movie Maker would only allow one audio clip to be played at a time. Therefore we had to try different strategies in order to solve this problem. We had many different possible solutions, but most of them were not that satisfying. At last, our brains started progressing and we came up with a great solution. We actually had to publish the movie first without the quote clips, and then start a new project and insert the movie into the timeline. Since the movie already has the music in it, there were still free spaces to put the extra audio clips. We added the clips with the quotes coordinated it with the music. Also, we had to adjust the volume in order to do so. Although it was a tedious process, we finally got the problem solved.
I believe, in this group project that each member contributed in areas that we are strong at. For example, Gino in my opinion is the strongest writer in our team; therefore we sent our writings of the Bloom’s Taxonomy to him for editing and further improvement. As for Emma, she is a great researcher. She gathered some pictures in the movie and provided us with powerful quotes from Anne. Last but not the least; Joo Keng was the one, which put all the information and pictures together into a movie. In my opinion, the three of us really worked well during this project. Everybody held their responsibilities and did their jobs assigned to them.
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