Romeo and Juliet: Q&A

Who are the most important characters in the play?

Romeo and Juliet, obviously.

What is the setting?

It takes place on Verona, Italy in the fourteenth century.

What are important themes?
1) Love as a cause of violence

2) The forcefulness of love

3) The individuals against society

What are the key moments in the plot?

1. Prince Escalus orders peace amongst the Capulets and Montagues or there will be big trouble
2. Romeo and Juliet meet at a Capulet party
3. Romeo and Juliet get married
4. Tybalt kills Mercutio and Romeo kills Tybalt
5. Romeo is banished
6. Friar Lawrence comes up with a plan to give Juliet poison that will make her seem dead and then for Romeo to be contacted to be told of the plan.
7. Juliet takes poison and all the Capulets think she is dead.
8. The message from Friar Lawrence does not reach Romeo but Romeo does hear that Juliet is dead.
9. Romeo sees Juliet dead and kills himself
10. Juliet sees Romeo and kills herself

Rationale

We are FDR (Good Aspect):

Something that is not seen in this school, but is definitely felt, is the fact that FDR is unlike any other school. As this school grows, it teaches us how to grow and as a result, there is a mutual benefit that we fail to appreciate. We grow so much with the school that it leaves a mark in each student's career life. This mark is called unity

When we were in the planing stage, we saw other videos that were professional and others that were cliché and dull. The cliché commercials were often created with iMovie and had the same font, same pictures and same format. In order to avoid this, we had to choose different angles, in which we would film the commercial. These were all included in our pitch that we presented to our class. In terms of iMovie editing, Emilio made sure to change the fonts and the transition effects in order to make them more genuine and professional.

The setting our commercial takes place, varies from EC classes High School classes. An effect that we expected the audience to catch was the innocence of the youngsters showed in our film such as the kids crawling around in the room and the 2nd Graders in their intense PE classes. Another aspect that we proved effective was the 180˚shot that we took of the PAC at the end of the video. The vintage-like effect benefited us to keep the commercial nostalgic-like.

The audience, we choose for the commercial, that "catches" these effects are alumni from the school, as well as students and parents interested in enrolling their sons or daughters in this school. This made us make the commercial solemn, "cute" and, most of all, nostalgic. We believe that we had truly excelled making these effects true and professional, leaving aside our filming limitations (as well as our editing limitations)

Final English Commercial

Watch the Commercial by Clicking This Link

Reflection (Tuesday With Morrie): 21 of March 2013

What motivates me the most, when working in a group, is when I see a great equal interest for what we are doing. I really like to see passion on people and when I don't feel them get passionate about the subject, but I do see this spark, I attempt my best to try to turn that spark into a fire that is big enough to incinerate a forest; however, if I see that some people don't have an interest I give up on them and I just let them follow their own way. Nothing necessarily kills my motivation but what does stop me down would be the fact that a person doesn't turn in their work on time or simply forget their materials. If that happens then I will get disappointed and I would probably try to push them away from a project since I don't trust them much.

Reflection (Tuesdays with Morrie): 18 of Mar 2013

As a writer, I have realized that I tend to write with formality and due to this, I find it hard to constantly try express some ideas and feelings when I am writing on my blog; nevertheless, I feel that this formality benefits me as a person since my writing sounds more professional. I dislike the fact that when I am writing in 1st person, I feel uncomfortable and mostly awkward. This is one of the very few reasons that I don't appreciate writing with high formality. I do take pride when I write in Spanish since I feel that my writing is very similar to the newspaper "El Comercio". I might be exaggerating but I still find a couple of similarities. 

Reflection (Tuesdays With Morrie): 14 of March 2013

Unlike Mitch's connection with his brother was quite weak, I believe that my connection with my brothers is strong. Although one of my brothers, is in Canada (studying marketing) I feel that we still are in constant communication. My family is in fact loving and affectionate but we are not like the stereotypical U.S "movie families". We do talk and have constant topics while we are in a conversation mood, but we don't talk about our feelings during dinner. One of the most stereotypical aspects of the U.S "movie families" is reflecting about out day, but my family watches movies on blu-ray. The truth is, I would rather watch the movie "Argo" with my family instead of sharing our feelings.

Relfection (Tuesdays With Morrie): 11 of Mar 2013

In Morrie's fourth Tuesday, he mentions the aphorism, "Once you know how to die, you learn how to live" (82). He is referring about how only people that are dying, and know that they don't have time left yet they enjoy socializing and enjoy the presence of people, know the "right" way of living. I believe that I have not lived enough to learn how to live and that I have a very short vision of what is life and how to live it.

Reflection (Tuesdays with Morrie): 7 of Mar 2013

Morrie highly relates with Mitch due to the fact that they both had a brother that they didn't value until they had a near-death experience. Mitch is actually uncomfortable with the situation and quickly tries to change the subject but he is affected by the problem, nevertheless.

I personally value my brothers quite a lot and now that I have read this part of the book I know that it is perfectly normal to play the "you are adopted" joke. I do, in fact, rely on my brothers. I don't rely on them academically but I do rely on them emotionally since they inspire me and they are always trying to pressure me to get to success.

Reflection (Tuesdays with Morrie): 4 of Mar 2013

Today we benefited a lot from Mr. Topf's advice. Throughout the book, we see that Morrie's childhood was very difficult and it was during a very difficult time as well (The Great Depression). We see that Morrie's father is constantly depressed due to his job and doesn't pay much attention to Morrie; however, Morrie's stepmother is more attached to him and teaches him about love and compassion. This is why Morrie doesn't show manly thoughts but he shows thoughts about friendship and helping your neighbours, etc.

I got to learn that a discussion is better organized when everyone is paying attention from the book and are constantly taking valuable quotes and showing interesting ideas or questions. Although everyone in the group is throwing out ideas, I constantly organize them and bring them down into more brief ideas. When these ideas are more simple, Yoo Hwa writes it on our notes.

Reflection (Tuesdays with Morrie): 28 of Feb 2013

When I read this book and see the actions that Morrie has, I am immediately reminded by my grandmother from my father’s side of the family. She has Alzheimer and each time I talk to her, she squints her eyes and pretends as if she knows who I am; however, this doesn’t stop her from talking about compassion and how “the other day” she saw a man helping a driver who had crashed his vehicle and things like that. Like Morrie, she is a patient elder. Although she doesn’t recognize you sometimes, she is still able to listen and nod along as you speak to her and constantly stops and squints her eyes to see if she is still speaking to you.

Today, I felt as if the reading schedule that we have is losing its value. I think that we are just reading to a page in which we think it is got to stop and this affects us during our discussions. I did get to get continuous discussions that ended up in some ideas for our advertisements. I have improved and I feel that the group doesn’t need a “force push” to get talking as we have more knowledge on the book.  

Reflection (Tuesdays with Morrie): 27 of Feb 2013

Our group discussion was rather uneventful and awkward; however, we did reach to agree as a group that Mitch was a character that wouldn’t be described as a good role model. We have reached this conclusion by the context that states that he is not in constant communication with his wife and friends from his years as a young adult. A valuable takeaway that we have stumbled upon was the fact that the book is constantly going back on time and going back to the present. Although this sounds very complicated, Mitchell Albom makes these connections clearer by using an italic font when going to his university years.

An aspect that I have seen improve in my learning has been my concentration when reading. I can see myself understanding the book better in comparison with times when I was reading through the book but not absorbing any knowledge whatsoever. Nevertheless, I do find that our learning as a group has been dismal because we struggle to communicate successfully. Most of the times we have a conversation with a weak topic that ends up falling in a matter of seconds.

Reflection (Tuesdays with Morrie): 25th of Feb 2013

Today, Yoo Hwa, Emilio and I started by making an organized calendar that showed us how many chapters we were going to read daily and when we were going to finish reading the book. Summarizing the calendar, we have to read 2 chapters daily and we will end at about the 8^th of March (possibly the 8^th of March). We have not entered in much detail in what are the advertisements but we do have an idea of some possible topics. Mr. Topf told me that this reflection is incorrect, therefore I will continue this reflection but in a correct manner. I have realized today that our group is not socially connected, creating some awkward moments during our discussions. Due to this, I will have a talk with them and try to make the group more united. Unfortunately I don’t have internet at home and I will find it difficult to have contact my group.

Book Trailer: Jack by A. M Homes