It is sad to say this but my sophomore year here at MSHS is coming to an end. This means two things; Summer and Exams. For mostly every class the Exam is standardized and in the test-like form to show “what you have learned”, but is this really going to show what you have learned when it is a paper full of specific questions with generically only one answer correct?
What I decided to do for my final exam was mess around with Beyond and make this show the most advanced animation-wise. It took me a while to get Beyond working as Mrs. LaBrecque or Mr. Jacob Phillips had to get it correlated and connected to MSHS’s very own Planetarium. This takes a little while since Jacob is not always around to help as he has his own life and Mrs. LaBrecque has 50 other things to do that are just as important, if not more. Also even though I wish it would, the world does not revolve around me. So instead of getting impatient or frustrated, I brainstormed. I really put some thought into what genre of song, what song, and what theme I was going to go for.
It took me a few days to come up with idea for the laser show, as my as two were very similar and I didn’t want that again. So this time I switched up the Genre. I changed it to more of a mellow pop. I chose the song Parachutes by Coldplay. This song is a little on the short side but that worked since Laser Shows take FOREVER to complete and I was already a bit behind. I liked the story line behind the song as it gave me a family feeling. The song is much slower than my previous choices which came out to help me out with correlating the lyrics with the song.
This show I wanted to prioritize the animations and making them correlate and be advanced, but at the same time not let them overlap. The skills required you are not just born with. You need to have prior knowledge of some type of editing as long as with a mentor who somewhat knows Beyond, because Beyond is very confusing. I learned these skills mostly from Jacob and people around me also figuring it out.
The project was going very well and on time but about a week into the Laser Show, the Song stopped correlating with the animations. You may be wondering how it can just stop. I don’t know what happened but every time I paused the audio it would skip back like 15 seconds, causing it to play the right lyrics at the wrong time. I could not find a permanent fix to it but I found a temporary fix incase it happens to Mrs. LaBrecque. As long as you start from the VERY BEGINNING and do not pause it all the way through, itll play smoothly. This made it very difficult to make the Lyrics on screen correlate with the audio. But I made it work and just started the song from the start, every. single. time.
Another reason why Science for Inventors is just overall my favorite class and helps you learn more. Mrs. LaBrecque chose to let us decide what subject we would like to focus on and pursue the final exam. This really helps my focus and hard work to stay on the right path because as I am doing my work and learning, most importantly I am having fun. I chose to go back to what I started with, The Laser Program utilizing Beyond 3.0 because I wanted to finish with what I started on. I would love to be in this same class in this same classroom with the same teacher next year as this class was amazing. Thank you Mrs. Labrecque!!!