Flashback to high school calculus – we had finished all our coursework, but there were still a couple weeks left in the semester that had to be filled with educational activity. So the teacher gave us a group project: we could do whatever we wanted, as long as it was somehow calculus-related.
I chose to do a movie, and because I had just gotten back into Power Rangers in a big way, it was a tokusatsu homage. I used a camera that filmed at a resolution of 320 x 240, 10 frames per second and didn’t pick up audio, so all the lines were dubbed over by me and two other people. The final runtime was 23 minutes 20 seconds.
To ensure the privacy of the participants, I won’t post a link to the film…plus it’s too embarrassing to share and YouTube would flag it a million times because of all the copyrighted music I used. You’ll have to make do with this description and low quality screenshots!
The Story
After 314 years of containment, six evil beings (named Sine, Cosine, Tangent, Secant, Cosecant, and Cotangent) are now free to wreak havoc on the world by absorbing all its numbers.
The only one standing in their way is the enigmatic “Master of Calculus,” a pink sweatshirt-hooded entity that recruits three high school students to be his Calculus Ninjas: Graph Ninja, Derivative Ninja, and Integration Ninja.
One-by-one, the ninjas fight and defeat Secant, Cosecant, and Cotangent. We filmed one of these scenes in the school’s back stairwell and another was filmed outside – I used animation to depict a mid-air battle with tiny silhouettes. It’s a stretch to call these “fights” because none of our punches connected, and the most violent thing that happens is when I get slapped by a paper chain representing the chain rule.
The remaining villains summon a giant sock monster that the Calculus Ninjas fight with their giant robot. The cockpit “set” was a table in the corner of the classroom with a cone in the middle (the joystick), and we filmed there while the rest of the class was watching High School Musical.
The movie ends with the sock monster’s destruction, the bad guys dying, and the ninjas deciding to go to lunch.
Educational Aspect
You know the old Apogee game Math Rescue? It was a generic platformer that would periodically make you do simple math problems to justify its label as an educational game. I applied the same principle to Calculus Ninjas. Whenever the ninjas used one of their special attacks, like “Cusp Shield” or “Integration,” a simple calculus problem would appear on the screen and get solved.
Soundtrack
Calculus Ninjas featured audio clips from the following:
- I Ran (A Flock of Seagulls)
- Danger Zone (Kenny Loggins)
- Push It to the Limit (Paul Engemann)
- Strange Readings From Vagra II (Star Trek: TNG)
- Borg Engaged (Star Trek: TNG)
- Flash (Queen)
- Ten Thousand Worlds (Yoroiden Samurai Troopers)
- Cosmos Conqueror theme
- ThunderCats theme
- Various free music loops
Aftermath
Upon conclusion of filming, I taped the villains’ animal masks on the teacher’s wall and she actually left them up for at least a year or two. I also made a sequel, but we’ll talk about that later.
Was Calculus Ninjas good? Of course not. I made it in high school! But it was the first live action movie I completed, so it deserves a place on a pedestal among my other projects. Not a high pedestal, though. It can be a small one that mice can play on.
And for the record, my group made an A on this project.
I understand our brains cannot comprehend the full version, but maybe, just maybe, you can share one minute of it on an unlisted YouTube link? Inquiring minds want to know!
I will…consider your request.
The world is just!
I second Hexum Black’s request.