April 24th Reflection

This morning I ran into Cole Johnson while walking through the cafe to Mrs. Walters room (where we have been working). I talked to him a bit about our video and told him we were in the final stages of editing. He offered to help out and I gladly accepted. He immediately made some small but influential changes to the project. For example, he was able to edit the interview footage of ourselves that we have to make the colors much brighter. It still looks very natural, but when you put the new footage next to the old footage the older one looks pretty gray. He also helped us make the image stabilization look better, and added a few transitions. During period 6 we showed the video to Mr. Silverman. He made us realize that we have a few places we could "trim fat", meaning we could cut out places where we have too long of a pause, a breath, etc. He also suggested that we add music at certain parts and gave us some possible choices. We lost track of time and worked all the way through lunch! Ben and I also created a "Google Earth Flyover" to put in our video. It shows the entire length of our trip. We made another one that was very detailed that we may show during assembly. We didnt finish in the two hours after school, so we well have to come in on saturday.

April 23rd Relfection

Today we continued to work on the documentary. It seems like we have been working on it forever. At the beginning it was obvious that we were making progress because we were syncing video from the trip with our voices-concrete evidence of moving forward. Recently we have just been making touch up changes- adding and reformatting pictures, stabilizing and trimming footage. I thought the last part was tedious so this part is especially not entertaining. We wanted to be done today but we didn't have a chance to run the video by Mr. Silverman. We will show him the video tomorrow and get his advice on whether or not we need to add music and what other small changes we need to make. We hope to have it completely done for the weekend!

April 22nd Reflection

Blog for Wednesday April 22 We are almost done with the video! I worked for a total of 6 hours on the documentary today and it paid off. We have each piece of footage where we want it and lined up with the audio. It was a very tedious process but I like how the video is looking so far. The only thing we have to do tomorrow (Thursday) is finish stabilizing some of the footage and make some final touches to make it better. We also need to add some credits to the end of the video and make the ending a little better. I only have two free periods tomorrow, so it looks like it will lead to another long day after school.

April 21 Reflection

6.5 minutes- thats how much I got done in 4.5 hours today. Splicing the footage together was so tedious. Even after organizing the footage into categories, it still took a while to find what scenes I wanted in certain situations. The video is looking like it will be about 10.5 minutes long, so am almost two thirds of the way done. Tomorrow I hope to be more efficient when I edit. The main problem I faced when I was working today was simply getting used to the Adobe Premier program. I had to figure out how to delete audio from the tracks, stabilize footage, and other things that turned out to be somewhat difficult with an unfamiliar program. I have three periods off tomorrow as well as time after school, so I am hoping to be able to have all the footage together by the end of the day so we can put the finishing touches on later in the week.

Monday April 20st Reflection

I'll admit- today I didn't get much done on our project. I was loaded down with makeup work for some of my AP classes so I was only able to work on the project for one hour. I finished getting the footage organized so that tomorrow I can start helping Ben edit. I also have started to think about what our presentation in front of the school will look like. Since the presentation is only 5 minutes long, we can't show the full video in assembly. I was thinking that I could make some sort of a trailer of the actual video filled with interesting footage from the trip. I was also thinking that we would have a powerpoint presentation with clips from the trip as well as photos from the documentary making process. Hopefully we will be completely done with the documentary on Wednesday so we can start planning our presentations in detail.

Friday April 17 and Sunday April 19

On Friday Ben and I made corrections on our script that we ran by Mr. Silverman. Luckily we did not have to change too much! It was such a relief to finally be done with the script- it now feels like we are making real headway. Mr. Silverman suggested that we take some time to read over and practice speaking the script so that when we recorded it we would sound our best. During my last period on Friday I rehearsed my lines a few times as well as this weekend. Today Ben and I finished recording our script! Mr. Silverman was nice enough to come in an help us get the camera and the lighting set up today. It took us a couple hours but we finally made it through. Next week we will cut and edit the film down to what we have been envisioning. I look forward to seeing what the finished product will look like!

April 16th Reflection

Yesterday I forgot to write my blog so I am doing so now. Yesterday we continued to crank out our script. Conveniently, we both had the last 3 periods of the day off so we were able to work very efficiently. Before the end of the day we had finished our script- 10 pages long including screen directions- and stopped by Mr Silverman's office to run it by him. He said he would take a look at it for us and send us a list of corrections that we should make. He sent us the corrections that we need to make last night and we will correct them today. It felt so good to have the majority of the work for the script behind us. After school, Ben came over to my house to help me wash the pots and pans from the trip and FINALLY finish getting our basement cleaned up. The only thing we have left to do in terms of finishing the trip is to make a few returns to REI and donate our extra canned food to a food bank.

April 15 Reflection

Today was a pretty bland day. I woke up at about 9, got to school at 9:30 where Ben met me at the door. We realized we didn't have to be back until last period of the day, so I turned right back around and went to Ben's house to work on the script. The script is tedious work- we have to write the dialogue as well as indicate what video we want playing at the same time. We are using a legitament screen writing software called Celtx so it looks pretty official. After school, we returned to Ben's to crank out some more. It was pretty nice to be able to project our computer screens up on the big screen at his house. We wanted to finish today, but it looks like tomorrow will be our new deadline to complete the script as it is taking longer than expected.

April 14th Reflection

Today I had classes to begin and end my day. In the middle, I was able to get some productive work done for our script-sort of. During the second period of the day I began working on an outline. It was hard working without Ben there to bounce ideas off of, but I was able to get some ideas down on paper. However, the very next period we spent about half an hour talking with Mr. Silverman about potential story lines for the video. He ended up steering us away from the direction that I had been going in- solely about conservation- towards a more "interesting" story of our experiences. He made a good point by saying that anyone can get stock footage and make a conservation film, but since we have our own footage we should try to make the documentary centered on our trip- the people, the hardship, the good times, etc. Ben and I both liked this idea so I think we will go with it. Sadly, going with this idea meant I had to scrap most of the work I did in my first period of the day. I guess it is all part of the process. At about 5 oclock Ben came over to finish unpacking. All of our stuff had finished drying so we now had to put it away. At about 6:30 we got side tracked and started to work on our script. We actually worked very efficiently straight through dinner till about 9 oclock. Our goal is to finish the script tomorrow so we can start the editing process.

April 13th Reflection

Today we started to get settled into the school routine again. I had 2 classes 3 off periods which was pretty unusual. However, I felt that I was decently productive during those periods. I accidentally went to my English class when I didn't have to, but luckily they had a work period for a paper and I was able to knock out some early research on the Apalachicola River. During my next free period, Ben and I overlapped and were able to organize our footage using one of the computers in Mrs. Walters photo room. We had to tediously organize all of our pictures and videos into day by day folders because the time-stamps on our cameras were messed up. We worked well into lunch which was painful because we were missing our first fried ravioli lunch in a while! Last period of the day I tried to find Mr Silverman to schedule a meeting so he could help us out with some editing software, but he had a class so I sent him an email instead. I also began a Google Doc with Ben so we can tackle our script for the documentary. Tomorrow we will see the rest of the footage and decide what direction we would like the documentary to head. This should help to spark some ideas on what the film should cover exactly.

Day 12 (April 10)

Today we unwound from our trip. I was able to sleep in after getting home late last night.  Ben and I started our day at around 12:30 when he came over to help me unload the car.  We literally had a truckload of supplies from our trip to take out- all of which were wet and smelled terrible.  We laid out our camping supplies such as the tent, sleeping pads, and sleeping bags to air out for a while. We still have a lot to do once the equipment dries out, but we will let it sit for a few days. I started a load of laundry which is currently being washed for the 3rd time downstairs (that moldy smell still won't go away!).  At about 2:30 we went back over to Bens house and reviewed footage.  We didn't even get half way through all of the tapes that we have but it was nice to see that most of the film turned out nicely.  We also started to think about a possible script for our documentary and how we could piece our footage together.  

Day 11

Today was our first day back in civilization.  It felt so good to sleep in and not having to worry about breaking down camp.  Ben had to head back around 12 or so, but I had a free day so my family and I stayed behind.  Yesterday I saw a bunch of redfish getting scared off of a flat about 2 miles from the end.  I wasn't able to try and fish because we had to keep paddling, so I wanted to make sure that I at least tried to catch them today. Well, after 10 days I still wasn't tired of my little red kayak and my dad and I relaunched them this afternoon to go try to catch dinner.   We saw a bunch of fish but were only able to catch one redfish and a couple of freshwater largemouth bass right on the edge of the gulf. 

Later in the afternoon, my family and I stopped by the Apalachicola Riverkeeper. A woman named Shannon showed us around the office and gave us thirty minutes worth of information about the importance of the river to the ecosystem. Basically the river supplies fresh water that the entire estuary system needs to survive.  The water in the river is completely fresh almost all the way to the gulf, and the Apalachicola Bay water is brackish (meaning half fresh and half salt).  This type of environment is perfect for baby fish and other species as supposedly the larger predators do not like the brackish water.  We really enjoyed our time at the office and I will be in touch with Shannon throughout the remainder of the project.

The rest of the day we drove home.

Day 10

It feels very strange to be typing this blog in the comfort of an actual bed!

This morning we knew that we had a decision to make- whether to split up the remaining miles into 2 days, or do it all in 1 day.  We slept in anyways and got up around 9, took our usual 2 hours to get packed and left around 11.  We were still pondering the idea of splitting up the remaining distance for two days until we saw one of the mile markers on the side of the river.  It said 20.3, meaning we had 20.3 miles until we reached Apalachicola.  Once we saw that sign, each mile marker that we saw became a sign that also seemed to say "X miles until real food, X miles until a hot shower, X miles until dry, clean clothes" and that was plenty of motivation to keep paddling.   Don't get me wrong, we have had a great time and those inconveniences were easily dealt with on the river, but we were not opposed to sleeping in a warm bed with real sheets!

We ended up paddling a rough 24 miles today. We saw plenty of wildlife again, such as bald eagles and tarpon.  It was very difficult to film/ photograph some of these things because all of our cameras have to be in waterproof cases, so they are hard to get out quickly.  We arrived at around 5:30 and were met by our overly excited parents at the marina.  More importantly, we had a great filling dinner at Boss Oysters. What a great way to spend my birthday!

Tomorrow we were supposed to still be paddling. However, we have decided to spend the day exploring the area around Apalachicola both in kayaks (they will finally be light and easy to paddle without all of our gear) and by car.  Also we will have time to review some of the footage and see what other shots we made need to get while we are here.

Day 9

We did not have any service at our campsite so I am just now getting up the blog for yesterday. 

Day 9

Today we knew we had a long but interesting day in front of us.  We finally got out of camp before 10:30, scooting out at about 10 or so.  Our GPS died so we do not know exactly how far we went in total, but I am guessing we went around 22 miles.  We started our day by paddling about 5 miles to the Chipola Cuttoff. This is a large creek that juts off of the side of the Apalachicola and goes towards what is known as the Dead Lakes.  The Dead lakes are

a series of lakes that look- dead.  There are huge Cyprus trees growing out of the water with Spanish moss hanging down, and stumps littering the whole lake.  It is a very fun but somewhat spooky place to paddle. We left the Dead Lakes  and continued down the Chipola for about 15 or so miles until we ran back into the apalachicola river. About 5 miles down the Chipola, we ran into a nice man who asked us about our trip. We told him where we had come from and talked about the Dead Lakes. He told us about a somewhat unknown part of the lake called Cotton Lake that is crystal clear. It is fed by springs, so the water is pure and fresh with about 30 feet of visibility.  We really wished we had run into him earlier!

Once we got back to the Apalachicola, we still had a couple miles until our campsite. We chose to stay at Hickory Landing, a designated campsite about a mile up what is known as Owl Creek.  This was another cool trip with Cyprus tree swamps that you can paddle through.  We got to the cell service deprived campsite at about 7:45, with just enough light to film ourselves setting up camp.  We fell asleep to an absolutely terrifying screeching noise coming from the swamp- still not sure what that was exactly!

Reflections for days 7 and 8

Yesterday and today were very relaxing days on the water.  We got off to our usual late starts and lightly paddled until about 5 each day. Easter was beautiful on the river- while camping over the cliff I saw an amazing sunrise, and on the sandbar that night a great sunset.  It was fun to see other people out enjoying the river on Easter as well. One family was parked on the beach we camped on, and we talked to them all afternoon.  We talked about fishing, gators, and heard countless stories from their life on the river.  One story in particular sure got our attention.  A man named Curtis told us a story about when he went hog hunting with dogs, and one went missing.  They had tracking collars on the dogs so they came back the next day with GPS devices.  They got close to the river and their device beeped quickly meaning that they were close. A couple minutes later a 15 foot gator surfaced.  Once they connected the dots they shot it and cut it open.  The collar was in it's stomach as well as the whole dog. The family offered to take us back to their camper to eat and sleep but we declined, not wanting to leave our kayaks out in the open.

Today we did more of the same, paddling off and on and drifting down the river.  The weather was absolutely perfect today- little to no wind but still not too many bugs, and ample sunshine.  I caught a couple bass this morning and kept one alive for as long as I could so that we could eat it tonight. We got a video of me cleaning the fish and cooking it in the butter, lemon juice, and capers. It turned out very well in my opinion!

I used the remains of the bass I cleaned to set limb lines again.  About an hour later, I looked out over the water with binoculars to see the limp bouncing up and down.  I sprinted to the kayak and paddled across, and luckily the catfish was still hooked. It wasn't as big as the first but it still was around 10 lbs and too big to eat in one sitting so we released it. I also killed a water moccasin with a paddle when it came up into our camp. It was another adventuresome day in north Florida!

Reflection day 6

Today we finally got the relaxing day that we felt like we deserved. The last 4 days we have busted our tails trying to get to our campsite/ dams, so a day with no timetable was very enjoyable.  We pushed off at our normal time- 10:30 am- and paddled leisurely for a couple of hours.  We did not have to paddle hard at all as the current is significantly stronger than it was above the dam. We estimate that it adds about 1.5 mph to our paddling speed, so we get  much farther than before with each stroke.

My dad decided to come down to see us and make sure that we had everything that we needed for the rest of the way.  We met up at about 2, and he gave us more fishing gear, lemon juice, butter, and capers for cooking fish, and a large pepperoni pizza! We absolutely crushed it, finishing the whole thing in about 10 minutes. This meeting was definitely a morale booster and gave us the energy to paddle the next 6 miles to our current campsite.  We are camped up on top of a cliff overlooking the river. It was a sweet spot to watch the sunset while cooking dinner.

Tomorrow we will get back on track with a longer day to make sure we are on pace to explore the Dead Lakes in a couple of days.

Day 5 reflection

Reflection day 5

Day 5 is over, and I cannot be happier to say it.  For the second day in a row, we thought we were in for an easy paddle but that changed as soon I got a voicemail late this morning.  The caller was informing us that nobody was working the Jim Woodruff Dam at the bottom of lake Seminole that day, so the only way we could get over the dam would be to get there by 3 in the afternoon where the caller would personally let us through.   We had a full hour less time than we thought we had, and our arms paid the price. We ended up paddling 7 miles on the lake, most of the miles being on open water.  Unfortunately, the wind had been mild every day until today.  After about 3 hours of plowing through whitecaps, we had both filled our kayaks up with water. Usually we would stop and bail them out, but every time that we stopped to rest we would drift backwards. We  ended up getting to the dam just in time.

After we got through the lock, we noticed that there was a small town by the river with FOOD!  I stayed to watch over the kayaks while Ben walked into town. He came back with 4 burgers, two fries and a drink which we demolished.  While he was gone, I talked with a family who went to the river to test out their new boat.  For 30 minutes they asked me about our trip, stating countless times just how much they wanted to come with us.  The two older boys gave me tips on how to fish the next couple miles down the river, tips I plan to use to catch dinner tomorrow. 

We are settled in at camp by the side of the Apalachicola river. In the 6 or so miles we have paddled we have already seen a couple gators, two pigs and a bald eagle. I look forward to a much more relaxed day tomorrow. 

Here is a picture of Ben paddling as we made the final push to our campsite tonight.

Reflection day 4

Wow. We thought this was going to be an easy day, but instead we are crawling into our tent before 9 o'clock.  

The day started around 10:30 when we finally took off from our campsite.   (We seem to have sped up all processes of camping/paddling except for repacking each morning). Our initial plan was to stop at a campsite about 9 miles down the river at the top of Lake Seminole.  However, about 1 o'clock we were making such good pace that we decided to push on to a campsite about 7 miles further.  These next 7 miles were straight up exhausting.  There ceased to be beaches to stop and rest on so we did not get out of our wet kayaks for 7 straight hours! By 530 we were ecstatic to reach our campsite and put on dry clothes.  

One of the cool events of the day happened just after we started our paddle. I looked at the GPS and saw that there were large lakes just to the side of the river.  We saw a creek and naturally decided to explore it.  Just before we entered, I threw a topwater rubber frog at the entrance hoping for a big bass. Instead, out came a large owl trying to snatch the  fake frog off of the surface of the water. I casted again and the same thing happened, only this time Ben got it on film.

Lake seminole has been very interesting so far. There are large, shallow coves and creeks surrounded by tall grass. It is certainly different from the lakes around Atlanta- I've never seen anything like it.

After we settled in at camp, two very nice country men (father and son) approached us. For the second night in a row, we were entertained for an hour by countless stories from their pasts. They invited us into their camper and offered us some burgers, which we gladly accepted.  It is great to see just how people open up to us once we tell them about our trip. 

Reflection Day 1- somehow it got deleted

Today we started our kayak trip from Fort Gaines to the Gulf.  We packed our car last night, but we put the finishing touches on this morning and headed off about 7:30. We drove through thunderstorms all morning during the drive to Fort Gaines. Right when we arrived the clouds parted and we didn't have a drop for the rest of the day! It took us a full hour and a half to get the kayaks packed and ready to go. About 130 we pushed off.  The kayaks are a little bit more cumbersome than expected, but overall they have performed pretty well. The only complaint that we have is that the river is not helping us out at all-it's moving incredibly slowly. So, the 13 miles we paddled this afternoon were powered solely by us, which was somewhat tiring. 

We were able to fish along the way by trolling Rapalas behind the boat.  I caught small 2 spotted bass (one of which we just ate for desert after quesadillas)  and one 5ish pound striper. Ben caught a nice 3.5ish pound bass as well. We didn't even fish the last two hours of paddling because we wanted to make sure we made camp with enough light (which we did).

We saw two gators, one of which was one of the biggest I've ever seen at around 10 to 12 feet and wider than our kayak.  Luckily they were very spooky and ran off. We also saw two deer and countless birds.

Tomorrow we go through the George Andrews Dam. We had pretty much no service the whole time we were on the river so I hope that the dam can still lock us through. It will be a pain to carry our kayaks around if not. 

We got some pretty good footage today but were unable to interview anyone. We talked to some very nice fishermen however who gave us advice on some fishing spots.

We are sitting under the stars right now on the beach and talking about our next day.  We think tomorrow will be a pretty long day as we need to make up for our somewhat shorter day today. 

There is barely any service but we will try to upload blogs and pictures when possible.

Reflection day 3

We had another long paddling day today. We tried to start earlier, but we didn't get off until 10:30 again this morning. We made our destination be a campsite 17.5 miles away and we set a goal to be there by 6 in order to set up camp. The last two nights we had skated in a little too late and had to rush to set up camp, and we wanted to avoid that again tonight.  We caught a couple more fish along the way trolling but nothing noteworthy.  When we finally got to the campsite, I baited the limb lines with cut up bass I had saved yesterday for bait. We talked to a very nice country man by the name of James Harper who told us many of his stories from his past. We were able to film parts of it, I am hoping that the audio turned out alright.  After talking to him for a hour or so, I decided to cook dinner. When I walked to the river to get water for pasta, I saw one of the limb lines bouncing a whole branch up and down.  I jumped in the kayak and paddled over. A minute later, I had a 10 or 12 pound catfish in the boat. I've never seen a fish so fat. We decided that we would waste too much of the fish if we decided to eat it, because we probably could barely finish one filet for dinner and we don't have a cooler. I reset the lines so we are hoping to have catfish for breakfast tomorrow.

Tomorrow we will go about 10 miles to our next campsite on lake seminole.  Supposedly the fishing is amazing, so I am happy to have a shorter day tomorrow. I hope the weather continues to cooperate!

Reflection Day 2

Today was a pretty long day. We set an alarm for 8 o'clock this morning, thinking we could get a good start.  Somehow it took us 2.5 hours to repack our camping stuff so we got off to a late start for what we had planned for today. We had to make it to George Andrews dam by 4:30 or else we would be carrying the fully loaded kayaks about a half mile around the dam.  This was enough incentive to make us paddle the 14 miles quickly. However, we stopped a little bit too long to talk to our worried mothers (who were waiting at a boat ramp along the way to see if we needed anything else) and to eat lunch, so we ended up having to sprint the last  7 or so miles to the dam. We made it just in time, as the lock doors swung open for us at 4:15.  I was able to film a cool time lapse shot of the lock lowering us down- I hope it turns out alright.  We decided to take a good long break after the dam. After we had regained some strength, we leisurely paddled until about 6:00 when we decided to start looking for campsites.  We started to get a little nervous when some of the beaches we had looked at on google earth turned out to be very steep and rocky and it was getting late.   We even found one beach that would have worked if we hadn't seen a sign that said something like "no trespassing- violators will be confronted with force and may risk serious injury or death." Needless to say we decided that we would try and find another spot. 

About 5 miles past the dam, we found a great beach where I am currently typing this blog.  It is about 20 feet up from the water and we can see two ways down the river.  We ended up going right at 20 'map miles'.  My arms are definitely feeling it right now. We estimated that we took around 18,500 paddle strokes today.

We didn't see as much wildlife today, but we still saw a couple gators, snakes and plenty of birds.

Tomorrow we are planning on going 17.5 miles to our next campsite.