Haunted High School! Halloween at Arts!

It's Halloween at Arts and the Media majors have decided to get into the spooky spirit with their own ghost PSA videos! For those who are unaware, PSA stands for Public Service Announcement. Normally, a PSA is about a topic that someone wishes to spread awareness on and inform the public about. Usually a public service announcement is non-fiction, but it doesn't have to be!

Image from the short PSA of the Food Stealing Ghost

In the spirit of Halloween, every Media major was divided into groups of three or four and assigned to create a public service announcement about a ghost haunting the Arts Academy. For my group, I was assigned to work with two amazing Juniors, Allei Floyd, and Savanna. We decided to take a more comedic approach to the challenge, and created the funniest and creepiest demon you'll ever watch on screen. A demon that steals your lunches and candy bars!

In this blog post today, I'm going to take you through the process of how the following short film was made. As well as all of the effort and time that this group has put into this project.

The day the challenge was first given to us was like any other normal day in the Media Department. We had all walked in to do our journal work for the day, but instead of finding a prompt for our journal entries, we found our names scattered on cards at each table. I had found my name along with Allei and Savanna's who were already sitting at the table waiting for me. Mr. Riffel had announced to us we would be making a ghost PSA and that the names on the tables were our teams for the assignment. I immediately felt bad as I was leaving my major that day for instant admissions to Erie Community College.

When I came back about half an hour later, Savanna and Allei were already deep into the production process. In media, we always start with the Pre-Production before moving on to actually filming. This process involves things such as a shot list (what shots we would want for the film), and the script.

Savanna was our editor, so she had created the first draft of the shot list, it was a broad copy open to interpretation, and we sat together discussing how to narrow it down to extreme detail. We finally had it, we would create a film of a demon who would steal people's lunches, and his favorite food to steal would be people's candy bars. Allei was our director, she had come up with the small script and exactly where we should shoot the scenes, making her set design as well.

Now I know to a non-media major this would sound boring, but it's actually one of the most important parts of filming. Without a shot list, storyboard, and script, very little work can get done as their is poor communication and planning, leaving people to guess what they are supposed to be doing. So after we got the shot list down to a shot for shot list, we jumped right into the fun part, filming!

Masala in the scene where the ghost has stolen all the food from her locker.

When deciding on the cast for the film, we figure there was no one better for the role of the main girl than Masala, her emotion was amazing and really brought our ghost to life! In the filming process, I gladly took on the role of camera person. Okay that was a bit of a lie, Savanna and I kind of fought for it a bit, but I won! Sorry about that Savanna. Normally we use our major's professional cameras and lights to film, but in this case the challenge went even farther than the topic of the film. Almost the entire PSA was shot on our school laptops!

At first, Savanna and I agreed that this was way more trouble than it was worth, it was terrible at focusing on Masala, the lighting was awful, and attempting to move files to edit them was beyond a pain. But despite this, because our shot list was so detailed and we managed our time so well, we finished almost all the filming within just one day.

But of course with only two periods with the juniors, Savanna and Allei would have to leave for their 5th period class, leaving me on my own. Since I was the only Senior in the group, it became a solo project when the clock struck 11:10am. Once my team would leave, I devoted all of my time to editing the footage we had and figuring out how to improve on it, this is where I found the first huge bump in the road. Corrupted Footage.

In editing, there are times when the computer doesn't do what you want. This was one of those times, the footage we had filmed of Masala and Allei for the scene where they finally see the ghost was corrupted. The video was crystal clear, but the audio was static and cut out at parts. It was completely unusable and needed to be re-shot. Let me tell you guys, you could hear the thump of my head hitting the desk in frustration. I decided to skip over that part for the time being and shoot the final ghost scene with Olivia Myers, alerting Allei of the issue the next day. We then spent about ten minutes the next day re-shooting all the corrupted scenes, this ate into our editing time for the piece.

By this time in the project, the group was starting to suffer. Allei had left for a couple days for her own personal reasons, leaving our group down to two people. On top of that, Mr. Riffel had also taken a sick leave for a couple days. We still needed an audio track for the project, but Savanna and I had no prior audio training and was relying on Mr. Riffel to teach us. We didn't have the time to wait for him, we needed to figure it out on our own.

That day after Savanna had left, Miss Murray and I spent the entire 5th period with me in the audio booth practicing using Logic Pro X and the equipment in there. When Savanna came back the next day we spent all of our time in there creating a creepy underlay track from different sounds and instruments inside of the software.

By this point, we were trying to decide on a name for our film. We had it all down, the footage, the audio, even the smallest detail down to light and special effects. But we were missing the name at the very end. I sat in career and financial, another class Miss Murray taught, I was lost in thought about what to name it. My friends had noticed my spacing out and asked what was on my mind. I explained to them my situation of the name hunt for the PSA. One of my friends, a very creative artist, had suggested the name "Eat Your Heart Out". I pitched it to Savanna and we both agreed we loved it, so now with a name before the credits, we were excited and ready to present our work to Miss Murray and Mr. Riffel.

Masala when she discovers her locker vandalized 

The film was complete and in it's final stages, Post-Production. At this point the only thing being done to the film was touch ups and double checking for any errors. The editing was done mostly by Savanna, she had taken the footage I organized and added color overlays and special effects, as well as title cards. We both found it to be a hilarious film with a creepy undertone. Finally we put the end credits on it and sent it to Mr. Riffel for review.

After Mr. Riffel gave us a couple quick notes and suggestions, the video was finally in the very last step of Production, Publishing. Well, that's what I'm doing right now right? So obviously we are at that step. If I had to comment on the project and it's process as a whole, I had a lot of fun. The film itself came out great and I had a lot of good laughs while filming it. Despite the bumps in the road Savanna and I managed to work our way around them to create this amazing piece. It had emotion to it, which is all I could ever ask in a film I created.

In conclusion this post Arts Academy, I wish you all a Happy Halloween! Enjoy your candy and spooky parties! Especially Night of the Living Majors. And I hope you enjoy everyone's ghost PSA videos, since we all put a lot of effort into them for you guys. Be sure to come to the Halloween film party the Media and Communications Department is hosting on October 31st right after school! Remember to keep the scares up this amazing spooky season.

Welcome to the Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts!

Welcome to People of Arts! The Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts is not like any other high school you'll probably ever see. With eight different majors, there's always something going on in this school!

From Visual Arts to Music, the Arts Academy has plenty to offer to young students seeking a career in the arts. It provides an amazing opportunity for kids to express themselves through their art as well.

This blog covers the students of the Arts Academy as well as the majors they represent. You'll be able to see their inspiring work and get to know them for the awesome artists and performers they are. Our goal is to let the voices of the Arts Academy be heard. They deserve for their passion to be shared with the world.

To see more of what the Arts Academy has done throughout the years, you can check out the student news website.

ALL Humans of Arts, Visual Arts {Part 3: Jacob Kusmierski}

So we covered a lot of the possible issues, but there's still one more opinion that I personally was very excited for. Jacob Kusmierski is the last of the Senior Art majors I spoke to. He is very passionate about his art and showing it off. He cares very much about the lack of representation his major receives, and has spoken out about it on numerous occasions.

Jacob Playing his Guitar for his Instagram

Jacob is one of the expressive Art majors I've met. He is not only outgoing in his art, but in his personality as well. He loves the creative differences between him and his fellow Artists. He loves how even though they are different in so many aspects, they always seem to unify together in a unique way.

Unlike Layanna and Rayond, Jacob doesn't seem to put much of the blame for their lack of representation on the school and/or their teachers. He believes more the problem lies within the Art majors themselves.

"I feel there isn't much to credit us for. As Art majors we are quiet and reserved, we complain about getting no representation however we never come together to represent ourselves other than our art show."

Jacob claims that to him, the Art majors haven't taken the initiative to show off their work. He believes that they haven't pushed their ability in showing off their work to others. When asked how he thinks this makes other view the Art department, he explains how their personality traits seem to give off the wrong idea to the rest of the school.

"I feel they view us as a sort of outcast group. Mainly because we are so reserved and quiet. If the art majors were a high school kid, it would be the kid sitting in the back with his head in his notebook."

So according to Jacob, the problem isn't the school. It is what lies inside of the Art department. He believes the solution lies within them, not within the school in itself.

Jacob's art piece drawn with Chalk

"I think we need stronger voices because we do nothing to make ourselves heard. It's okay to complain that we want change, but I feel like as we get older we get more enthusiastic. And not having representation doesn't help."

According to Jacob, the Art majors themselves need to take a stand before anyone else can. They need to show how much they want it before they can be given it. Jacob gives us a completely different outlook on the representation issue. Which leaves us still questioning what the problem is and how to solve it.

I feel to put it in the simplest way, the Art majors create amazing pieces and should have just as many chances to show them as anyone else would. They need more spaces, they need more time in the year, but most of all they need us. They can't show the awesome work they produce, without an audience to show it too. They need to feel the passion in their craft that they did before, so that the many other artists that will follow them can feel the same.

ALL Humans of Arts, Visual Arts {Part 2: Raymond Hough}

So we have already covered a lot of the possible issues for the lack of representation. But we've still only scratched the surface. The art department has had many students graduate and go on to pursue a career in art. With that in mind, we can't just look at one artist's opinion.

Let's take a look at what Raymond has to say. Raymond Hough is also a 12th grade Art major. He loves how diverse the personalities of art can be. In his opinion, it allows for artist to express themselves without leaving their comfort zone too much. He believes that art has no limitations, and can be seen everywhere.

"I definitely feel my major could have more recognition in what we do, because we do work. But it's such an underground craft."

One of Raymond's many sketches in his Sketchbook

Raymond believes that since the art majors don't receive as much publicity as other majors, such as theater and media, that the art majors are often ignored. I personally would have to agree with him, the art majors have the art hallways in front of the school, and one art showcase room by the black box, and that's it. They have no other space to show off their work, especially to show it off daily pieces like Layanna suggested.

However, unlike Layanna who spoke about how others view the art majors, Raymond showed us more how he believes they have started to view themselves.

"I feel that some students slowly lost passion for their craft, this coming from discussion as well as insinuation. Some don't feel the passion they came here with is the passion they have now. Other students stopped caring after a certain point because it didn't seem to do much for them."

This is universal in the school, I have noticed as well as Raymond people's lack of interest in their abilities. But I've also noticed that student's with more stage time tend to feel more rewarded when performing, so they participate more and take joy in it. Could it be perhaps that this lack of recognition has caused the art majors to feel obsolete to the others? And if this is the case why haven't we given them the spotlight to show us what they can really do? What they are truly made of?

Raymond agrees with Layanna that the art majors need more time in the sun. Raymond feels as though the Arts Majors just don't have enough time throughout the year to show off everything they do.

"Our personalities are put into our art and I feel it should be shown more, as representation for the major and the different types of students here."

So although the problems the Art majors are citing are different, a common theme of solutions seems to be occurring over and over.  It's clear that so far they believe that they haven't been giving the proper space or time to execute their art in a beneficial way.

ALL Humans Of Arts, Visual Arts {Part 1: Layanna Sciandra}

Going to an Arts Academy, you meet a lot of people with special talents and skills. When I came here as a freshman, I saw it as a way to express myself through school performances and events. But I noticed very quickly, that the schools representation for each major was heavily unbalanced.

Granted, some majors are more fit for the stage than others. Not because of talent, but because of execution of the performances. However this didn't seem like a good enough excuse for me. With six majors in the school, give or take a few, it's hard to battle for the spotlight with such a short school year.

Our art majors produce amazing pieces every year, yet the only change they truly get to show it off is one single art show, which is often scheduled on the same day as another major's performance. Not only is this unfair to them, but it goes against what our school is about. Encouraging kids to embrace their artistic abilities and share them with the community.

In this Blog thread, I decided to speak with three Art majors I have seen do amazing work in the past. I've also seen their passion for their craft and most of all, their anger in their lack of representation. Layanna, Raymond, and Jacob, three art majors who have been attending BAVPA for years. They have seen how their major is treated and represented. Let's see what their opinions are on the issue and how it can be fixed.

Let's start off with Layanna Sciandra. Layanna is a 12th grade Art major. She has a huge love for photography, and loves the ability to get lost in the studio. She believes that art allows her to have a voice. That she can convey a message through her pieces.

Layanna's Print for her class. 

Layanna believes that several factors play into the art department's lack of representation. But she has noticed a long history of financial issues for the department.

"I do not feel like the major get's the representation it deserves. There is a lot of factors that contribute to that. While I realize there is only so much the school can do, every year we hear of budget cuts over and over."

According to Layanna, the arts department has been told of budget cuts, while also being asked to pay studio fees in order to draw. She believes that whether this information is true or false, money should not be a barrier for the department to show off their skills.

"There is so much we can contribute to, whether it's stage sets, murals, or even work within the community."

With the concern of how their represented in mind, I asked them how they believed the other majors of the school viewed them and their department. Layanna's answer was unexpected, but also upsetting.

"I haven't thought much about it. But they always say we have a certain look. Whether it's the clothes we wear or our demeanor. I've heard before I 'act like an art major' whatever that means. This stereotype downplays how much were capable of most of the time. The school's name is 'Buffalo Academy of Visual and Performing Arts.' I feel like some generalize art as something easier than it is." 

Like Layanna said, Visual Arts is a genre of art all in itself. Unlike the performance majors, they don't get the opportunity to express themselves through plays, music, or films. Telling a story through visual art and photography is difficult. So why aren't we giving them the chance to show us how? Layanna believes that this could easily be corrected.

"We need more access to space in the school for active projects. Displaying our work year round instead of just one dedicated day. Even if there is still only one dedicated day, make it a day only for us, instead of shared by another performance."

All of this is only from Layanna! If only one student has this many ideas to improve this issue, why hasn't anything changed? What could we do to make this better?