magicmacguffin — Camp Magic MacGuffin

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Saturday, July 14th, 2012

One of this weeks daily creates was (http://tdc.ds106.us/tdc187/) to record a small video of what was on channel 106. As it turns out, as soon as I turned to the channel my daughter started boucing around in excitement. It was one of her favorite stations! With us being at my aunts house I had no idea what station it was going to be on since we were at my aunts house, luckily for the both of us it was cartoons. Although due to this assignment I got stuck watching Johnny Test instead of my favorite Scooby Doo, I enjoyed doing it.

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Day 2: No Human Artifacts Daily Create Challenge

Saturday, July 14th, 2012

So it’s the second day of the Daily Create Seven Day Challenge, another photo assignment to take a photo of a natural scene without any human artifacts. It should make you think about how big or small natural areas are… and also, a question of even natural looking areas, aren’t they affected by human activity?

Today we photos from 31 participants, down a few from yesterday….

Again we had a good showing and attempts at isolating parts of our worlds that do not explicitly show signs of human imprints. My favorites included:

UMW studen Chanda capture this stunning interplay of two bees on an (?echinacea) flower.

Melanie’s “Trolls vs Unicorns” really flips the assignment inside out, its not pure nature, but again, not impacted by humans.

Ashely’s solitary tree speaks to me, isolation, determination, separation, yeah.

cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by aforgrave
Andy must have gotten down on his belly to take this low angle shot, and it works to look like a mountain range.

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by puptoes74
I was excited to see my friend Shelley join in, but was wondering where there were bears in Norfolk, VA, but she explained she was working on her Photoshop skills. Darn good if you ask me.

A majestic aspen grove from Wes Fryer.

cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by malynmawby
As Malwyn shows, you cannot go wrong with mimic of forms….

I like the idea here if merging two photos in the way that makes the look like prints on a table

cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by dkuropatwa
Darren creates a kind of surreal spooky place with the soft focs and low angle. A great photo IMHO.

Okay, we lost a few people from Day 1… are you in this #4week?

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Using Keynote to Make a Movie

Saturday, July 14th, 2012

I never intended for this to take as long as it did… those are turning out to be famous last words here in my summer of ds106.

As explained in the video description, The Daily Create #187 said:

Make a video of what is playing on channel 106 on your cable (or make it up).

Rather than completely make it up, I was inspired by a tweet I received this morning about a video posted to YouTube by CGP Grey

I have been wanting to make a video that explains something and this one was great! I wondered if Keynote could be used to create the bulk of a video like that so I tried it out with this one.

It’s not perfect and for some reason I couldn’t add any photos when I exported it to iMovie but I liked some parts of it (particularly the rotating ds106). It was an interesting experiment that was far more time-consuming than anticipated. Maybe it should be worth some visualassignment points!

How I Did It

1. Created slideshow with Keynote

The actions proved to be useful for video.
Don’t forget that you can order animations by opening the drawer.

2. Exported to QuickTime

3. Imported to iMovie

4. Split in a few places

5. Added beginning of CGP Grey’s video about The Difference between the UK, Great Britain and England

6. Added iLife sound effects, Hallelujah chorus and text

Posted in bunk5, Camp Magic MacGuffin, ds106, magicmacguffin, openonline, tdc187, VisualAssignments | Comments Off on Using Keynote to Make a Movie

The Start of ISTE (weeks later)

Saturday, July 14th, 2012

The first official day of ISTE was mostly focused on the awards’ ceremony. Luckily my husband and I wandered out onto the wonderful terrace at the convention center and ran into Lisa Parisi, Brian Crosby, and David Jakes.

Jakes was working on his Ignite presentation for the next day. Somehow this led us to a discussion of the flipped classroom. I have shared my thoughts on this topic previously but Jakes, ever the positive one, suggested that this is a topic around which there is a lot of interest and conversation. His theory is that we should be using that level of engagement as an entry point rather than simply brushing it off.

He asked us to consider the positives of the flipped classroom. Parisi quickly responded that the engaged lessons happening during classroom time is the one positive. Jakes’ argument is that those of us with issues about flipping classrooms should grab those positives we see as a way to push forward. A new way for me to think about this.

This led to a brief conversation about the idea of ‘yeah, but…’ One argument is that responding to a new idea with ‘yeah, but’ not only shuts down that conversation but makes it less likely that people will come forward with other new ideas. Jakes writes often about how words matter and I completely agree with that. Thinking about how an idea or response is phrased does matter and is something I need to remember. (Especially as I read Choice Words.)

This brief conversation, with so much food for thought, was just proof of the idea that the best parts of ISTE are often the unplanned meetings and discussions.

I hope I haven’t misstated anyone’s ideas or thoughts here.

Posted in bunk4, magicmacguffin, openonline | Comments Off on The Start of ISTE (weeks later)

"I Am No Man"

Friday, July 13th, 2012

cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by Dunechaser

I am back at Camp Magic MacGuffin after I was absent last week. This is the second week of video and it took me a couple of days to go through last week’s materials and pluck up the courage to use Windows Movie Maker for the very first time.

The assignment I chose is Return to the Silent Era. The goal is to take a scene from a modern movie and render it in the style of the silent era.

I chose one of my favourite scenes from LOTR - the one in which Eowyn kills the witch king. I had just watched Return of the King for the thousandth time and it struck me that this scene would look good in black and white. I was lucky enough to find a clip that already had subtitles, which made my task of turning it into a silent movie much easier.

I was surprised at how intuitive Windows Movie Maker is. I had wanted to learn how to mash and edit videos for some time, but had always put it off. I was afraid it would be too hard. I have only made this one clip so far and the task was relatively simple. I just added two effects (“black and white” and “old film”) and I added some Bach. I didn’t remove the original audio, but I muted it instead.

Here is my clip:

I Am No Man – Return To the Silent Era from Natasa Bozic Grojic on Vimeo.

Technorati Tags: ds106, VideoAssignments, VideoAssignments376

Tags: DS106,, VideoAssignments,, VideoAssignments376
Posted in bunk4, ds106, magicmacguffin, openonline, VideoAssignments, VideoAssignments376 | Comments Off on "I Am No Man"

The Departed Goes Silent

Friday, July 13th, 2012

I thought this assignment was very cool and creative. I decided to make the retro fit the departed to appear to be a silent movie. The first thing I did was download movie clips and trailers from YouTube using Real Player and then put them into Windows Movie Maker. I then found an old style countdown from ten that I added to the very beginning of the clip for some dramatic effect. I used about five clips to make this and took varying amounts from each one, after I put them into the order i wanted them in and added the title and credits slide. I also used an effect to give them a brown tint so they appeared to be an older movie which I think works great in Movie Maker. The last part was finding music because most silent films had music, the hardest part was deciding which song to use because I felt it had to fit the theme of the clips and the overall movie. I ended up using the theme intro to the game Mafia I or II I don’t remember but it reminded me of Al Capone or the Godfather music so I thought it fit perfect sense the Departed is a crime boss type movie. I really enjoyed the creative aspect of this assignment and using real movie clips was very enjoyable I hope you like it here it is below.

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Remixing Everything

Friday, July 13th, 2012

When I first saw this assignment I thought it was solely about how Hollywood re makes movies constantly oh was I surprised. The part that really stuck out to me was when they referenced Star Wars because to me Star Wars was as original as it gets. The author of this obviously does a great amount of research or really likes watching tons of old movies all day long. Being born in the 90s I had never heard of most of the movies that were referenced as predecessors to Star Wars. The first thing I thought of when I saw this was I hope he covers movies that should not have been re made, In my opinion I thought it was crazy to re make the karate kid because I grew up watching the original like it was my job I loved that movie, and although I like Jackie Chan I still did not want it remade. I found this movie extremely interesting because I was completely oblivious to how much re occurring themes there were and how directors will just take a scene from an old movie and just bring it up to date in thier movie.

One thing I am skeptical about is how purposeful the directors are in reusing old content. In some cases it is clear that it was done but in the vague references I find it hard to believe that the directors took all that time to put a plot together using old movies I feel like that would be a painstaking and long process but I have no experience in professional movie making. It is my opinion that for a lot of the re use the directors and writers came up with it and it either just is a common theme and it just happened to be similar or that they had forgot about seeing the older movie earlier and thought it was their own idea. I think that there is a mix of both scenarios going on and I would like to see an interview with George Lucas about where he got the ideas for the Star Wars scenes so if you know of one let me know. Overall it was an awesome clip and thanks for making us watch it because I would have not found it on my own.

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Today’s Daily Create instructed us to share a short clip…

Friday, July 13th, 2012

Today’s Daily Create instructed us to share a short clip of whatever was broadcasting on Channel 106 on our televisions. Truthfully, since the bad storms a few weeks ago, the reception on the TV in the Camp Headquarters has been terrible. Most channels have been unwatchable. Channel 106 has been particularly strange — it seems to be picking up signals from a variety of sources. See for yourself.

Posted in magicmacguffin | Comments Off on Today’s Daily Create instructed us to share a short clip…

Pulp Fiction Dance RE-DUB

Friday, July 13th, 2012

Although I said I was originally going to re dub the John Wayne movie I decided to do the dance scene from Pulp fiction. I decided this because on Monday I found myself watching Pulp Fiction for the hundredth time probably and I was reminded of this scene. The way they dance was so funny to me I could not pass up the opportunity to re dub it with different music. The program I used for this is Windows movie maker. The first thing I did was get the video off of YouTube by downloading it using Real Player. Real Player is very useful i would recommend it because it has built in converter to many different formats. So I used Real Player to download and convert it to Windows Media format and then dragged it into Windows Movie Maker. I then edited it down to the parts I wanted because I did not need or want the entire clip.Then came the difficult part, picking the new music. The way Uma Thermon and John Travolta dance is hilarious to me because it seems so dorky if you put it to modern music. After trying countless songs that just didn’t seem to mesh enough for me I settled on Tik Tok it just seemed to work, you may disagree or you may like it I don’t know its just my opinion so enjoy here it is.

Posted in Assignments, bunk2, magicmacguffin, umwsum12, VideoAssignments, VideoAssignments131 | Comments Off on Pulp Fiction Dance RE-DUB

The Hardest 4 Icon Challenge Yet

Friday, July 13th, 2012

I’ve been following Jim Groom’s “Name that 80s movie” 4 icon challenge series, and while he promised that they would become more difficult, I think the many summers I spent glued to the TV watching HBO for hours on end gives me an unfair advantage (I totally nailed the Flash Gordon one). I thought I’d try to up the “name that obscure movie” difficulty level, and while it was entertaining for myself to put together the following 4 icon challenge (I learned how to make a parchment-like background in Adobe Illustrator), I’m not sure if I did actually come up with something that will stump anybody….at least not anyone who is halfway decent with Google searching. Think you can name the this movie?

I continue to fiddle with the 4 icon challenge concept, this time blending both icons and actual images, one of those images laying over another. It’s not that I think it adds to the piece any, I’m just having some fun as I mess around with trying to visually represent the major elements of the story.

If you haven’t read any of my previous posts about the 4 icon challenge, you can check out how visually summarizing a movie, book, or other story is both really easy using tech, and is a great way for students to summarize major story elements, while having a bit of fun.

image credits:

vitruvian man - http://thenounproject.com/noun/vitruvian-man/#icon-No2532
gold brick - http://www.officialpsds.com/Gold-Bricks-PSD31100.html
mask – http://www.denbigharmysurplus.co.uk/army-stores/balaclava004.jpg
cup – http://thenounproject.com/noun/coffee/#icon-No16

Posted in 4 icon challenge, adobe, Art, bunk5, counselor, DesignAssignments, DesignAssignments358, digital storytelling, ds106, Illustrator, Language Arts, magicmacguffin, multimedia, openonline | Comments Off on The Hardest 4 Icon Challenge Yet