Kelly's+Final+Exam+Project!

I guess that out of all the movies we watched, the film //Do the Right Thing// was probably the most impactful. Not personally, but for the world as a whole. The constant mantra of “fight the power” hit home with a lot of people and will forever resonate in their minds after seeing this movie. It was kind of cheap on the production staff’s part to steal the tagline and main quote from a song that they didn’t even write, but it fit the movie well and made its point. It reflected what the writer and director were trying to get across in an effective manner. Although Mr. Masson and a lot of the class were really excited about the way this movie was filmed with its strange angles and such, it kind of just annoyed me. I see that it evoked certain emotions and moods, but I didn’t really like the way it was filmed too much. That’s just me. On the other side of all my criticism for this film, there were some positive aspects as well. The characters were developed well. I hated everyone, and since I did, they had to be well developed because otherwise I would have just been indifferent to them all. Not only was Spike Lee the director and writer of the movie, he also played the main character. Kudos to him for all his hard work. Contrary to my belief, this wasn’t his first time directing, acting, or writing a movie. He has since gone on to write, direct, and act in many more films. My favorite character in the movie, Sal, was played by Danny Aiello. In my opinion, he was the best actor in the movie and had the best role. He was the least judgmental character and the most understanding of them all. He wanted everyone to get along and in the end, ended up paying for it by losing his business.
 * __PART ONE.__**

The project that I got the most out of doing this year was probably the multi-media multi-genre research project. The fact that we each had to choose our own topic to research was a nice change from the usual monotony of being told what we had to do a project or paper on. It was a little difficult though, just because we had to do our own research and since we each had different topics we couldn’t ask our friends for help or even the teacher really, since any advice he had to give us was just general and not really tailored to our separate topics. Thinking on our own really came into play for this project. I came across a lot of problems during this project, one of the major ones being that I wasn’t sure what all the different genres should be. But after some long and hard brainstorming, I came up with I think effectively represented all of the points that I was trying to get across. I really learned a lot about independent research and how you have to be motivated to get anything done.
 * __PART TWO__**

It was a great advantage that we were able to go to the business room computers so we could use all of the online resources. It was also a different experience having to use library books. Since we have so much technology and information at our hands, I think teachers and students alike forget that books are just as effective as the computers we have. It was a little difficult at first trying to figure out how to use the card catalog and find everything I was looking for, but I quickly caught on and I think that in the end, the books were even more useful than any of the websites that I visited.

As with every project or essay you have to do, there are challenges. As I stated above, I faced the challenge of trying to figure out what topic to choose, which was probably the hardest part of the whole project. After finally choosing to study Dreams and why we dream and what they mean, I then had the difficult task of deciding what genres to use. That was quickly figured out and then the next most difficult thing was the trying to figure out how to use the library to get work done, the card catalog was challenging at first and trying to locate what I needed in the shelves was as well, but after a few times I didn’t even have to think about what I was doing.

I thought the final product of my project was very well executed. I liked how it came out. I did meet my own expectations, because at one point I was pretty certain that I wouldn’t ever finish the project at all and that it would be completely horrible, but I believe that in the end I really did a good job and effectively got my points across. I loved my topic and had a lot of fun researching it and doing this project. I think that is also apparent in the final product.