This is a review of my iHome, I love this thing besides my computer and cell phone this is probably my most useful object because it wakes me up when I need to get up and it keeps my Ipod charged and I love my music so without it I would be at a loss.
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Monday, July 16th, 2012Pranks are best done in SILENCE
Monday, July 16th, 2012More video assignments! This time it is a silent movie! When I was looking at this last week I was stuck on which film clip I should use for my silent movie. The last comment on the assignment page said “Get creative and choose a movie that would look most unlikely to be done from this era.” With that in mind I tried thinking of movies that were produced more recently. I started thinking of some of my favorite movies, and one of my all time favorites is “Parent Trap“, the modern one with Lindsay Lohan. I have good memories of watching it numerous times throughout childhood with my mom, and even now we watch it and can quote every line. It must have a wonderful storyline in order for there to be two versions of it. Anyways, I started looking on Youtube for different clips from the movie. I happened upon one of the prank scenes from the movie, but unfortunately it had French subtitles running throughout it. I was able to find a longer version of the clip that I wanted and I edited it down to just the prank scene using MPEG Streamclip. I thought this scene would give people laughs, and you can understand what is going on in it without the audio, perfect for the silent film!
After I trimmed the video down to the size I wanted I was able to upload it to Windows Live Movie Maker. I tried some of the different effects that were available to make the movie look older, but none were really that satisfying to me. I then tried using “The Artistifier” by uploading my edited version of “The Parent Trap” to Youtube, but that did not work. So I browsed on the internet for awhile trying to find programs that could help me “age” my movie. Then I happened upon something wonderful called “AVS Video Editor.” I downloaded it onto my computer and started editing,it even had something called “Old Movie Effect.” Within a half hour I had the perfect silent film, it looked professional! Unfortunately, when I tried to upload it onto Youtube, it said I had to buy it or else there would be a “AVS Video Editor” watermark across my whole film. I was so MAD!
But all is well that ends well. I ended up changing the color contrast on my clip in Windows Movie Maker to black and white, I then uploaded it to Youtube where I was able to put an “Old Fashioned” effect on it under enhancements. I then re-uploaded this newer version of my clip back onto Windows Movie Maker and finished editing. I muted the sounds from the real clip and added in different “silent movie” music clips from Freesound.org by Sam Fox. This was time consuming because I had to find the perfect spot to fade in and out the different music clips and sometimes I would have to repeat music clips because the scene I wanted them for was longer then the actual music clip. Finally I inserted in my title scene, visual dialogue scenes, and credit scene. Viola I was done!
Below are some pictures I took of my computer screen as I was completing my project.
You Just Got Served!
Sunday, July 15th, 2012One of the video assignments for this week was to do a play by play commentary on well….anything. In the description of the assignment were the words “funny video” and I thought of a music video. Now this may seem like an unlikely parallel thought to most, but not to me. Let me explain, my best friend and I have been creating our own personal music videos since we were 15. They are quite funny, but we made a solemn oath to each other that we would never publish them for people to see. So I looked through a few of our hilarious videos, reminisced and laughed, but as I was laughing I thought of another funny video I had shot and as a bonus had neither me nor my best friend in it! It was a “dance battle” from a friend’s wedding a couple months back. I had shot the video, but I had used one of the dancer’s, Brain, camera to record it. It was on his Facebook and as I watched it I said “this is perfect!” So I sent Brian an email asking me if he could send me the video so I could edit it, and I also got permission from the other dancer Justin.
The editing on this video took me a little bit to figure out, but finally I found a simple solution to overlay my voice into the video! I edited the video down to the clip that I wanted in MPEG Streamclip. I then uploaded the clip onto Windows Live Movie Maker. From there I was able to add in my title and credit pages. I then tried to find ways to play the video and while recording my own commentary. But I could not figure out how to do that on either MPEG Streamclip or Windows Live Move Maker, so I muted the video and played it while at the same time I recorded my commentary on Audacity. I then saved the soundclip on Audacity and uploaded it to Windows Live Movie Maker. They were able to play at the same time. I uploaded the new video with he commentary onto Youtube and I was finished!
So the actual storyline is a funny dance battle between two friends at a wedding. They were just being entertaining, trying to give the bride and groom something to remember. I decided to add funny commentary to make it fit the assignment, so the assignment was fulfilled, but with something personal and memorable.
Below are some pictures of my computer screen as I was editing the video.
Everything’s a Remix?
Sunday, July 15th, 2012This is week 2 of video analysis in ds106. Taking a look at the video series Everything is a Remix by Kirby Ferguson, we see that the same or similar ideas are repeated over and over, through decades and eras in movies. This concept is reinforced by last weeks study of reading movies and specifically genres or TV Tropes.
I never really thought about it before but many (if not all) movie story lines are regenerate, reinvented, reinvigorated, and reused many times over sometimes from lesser known movies like those listed here on Cracked.com. This makes me wonder when the last time there was a completely “original” concept introduced into our movie collections. And quite frankly, I do not know the answer. I’m not a big movie buff, and admittedly, I’ve seen the beginning or parts of many movies, but have fallen asleep or lost interest before viewing the entire film. However, I was excited to find myself identifying a “remix” scene Friday night while watching an old movie (old to me anyway!)
Friday was Friday the 13th. I thought it would be fun to watch the original, classic Friday the 13th movie that night. As the movie played there was one scene that caught my attention as familiar.
I recognized this scene from Dirty Dancing. Well, actually Friday the 13th came out first in 1980. Dirty Dancing debuted in 1987. But I saw Dirty Dancing before seeing Friday the 13th, so that’s my point of reference.
So in answer to the question posed to us this week:
Is everything a remix? I would have to say…Yes! I give the TV Tropes as evidence that all cinema falls into one or more of these categories, therefore connecting it to the others in each group or making a remix of ones that came before it.
The Departed Goes Silent
Friday, July 13th, 2012I 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.
Remixing Everything
Friday, July 13th, 2012When 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.
Pulp Fiction Dance RE-DUB
Friday, July 13th, 2012Although 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.
What Makes Me Laugh
Friday, July 13th, 2012This clip always makes me laugh because growing up playing soccer and now coaching some rec soccer some of the stuff is not to far off. This movie really made me laugh because so many people take youth soccer far to serious and this movie basically makes fun of all of that. Also I haven’t really found a Will Ferrell movie i didn’t think was funny. And also its not really highlighted in this clip but the rivalry between Robert Duvall and Mike Ditka is hilarious in this movie.
The Gardening
Thursday, July 12th, 2012Meanwhile back in Camp Magic MacGuffin we are working on video projects and editing. I was eager to try out the Send a Camp Movie to Camp project after speaking with Alan during our radio programs.
As it turns out the Buffalo, NY was the shooting location for a movie titled The Burning and the movie was shot at many Summer Camps in the area including camps belonging to my Boy Scout council. Even more specifically, several of the scenes were shot at camps I was both a camper and camp counselor. I recalled stories about The Burning being told growing up in the Scouts and now I have project to show my appreciation for a little local and Scouting history.
The goal of the project was to invert the personality of the film
Take one of the movies on the list of movies with camp themes, find a trailer for it, and re-edit the audio to completely change the plot- e.g. make a horror movie turn into a comedy, or make a romantic movie seem like a spooky movie.
So you can see the difference, here is the original trailer taken from YouTube.
Here are the steps I took to invert the personality of the film in the trailer.
- Took the clip from YouTube using Easy YouTube Downloader extension in Google Chrome
- Created an iMovie ’11 and imported the trailer
- Detached and deleted the existing audio track
- Recorded a replacement voiceover track using a different theme for the movie while watching the trailer (again and again)
- Laid in the new voiceover track from iTunes in the video clip
- Laid in a jazzy audio track to play as background music.
- This is actually a fellow camp counselor and friend of mine Paul Tynan
- Fine tuned the audio tracks with the video
- Uploaded the new trailer to YouTube
Here’s the modified trailer with a whole new feeling to the movie.
Pretty cool!
Now, for the touch of local Scouting history. In the opening scene of the movie the boys are skulking around a cabin (about 1’55″ in the clip below), this is lower half of Lakeside Lodge at Camp Scouthaven in Freedom, NY. At that time it would have been where the boats were stored for the waterfront. Here’s the opening scene.
I’ll have to go out to camp and take a picture of this spot and add it to the post later. Enjoy and we hope to see you at gardening camp this Summer.
Video Killed the Radio Star in Week 7
Wednesday, July 11th, 2012This letter home is in video, where I inserted some pictures and text into my video letter home. Still feeling my way through the video editing tools so it’s a little crude. It will get better as the assignments move into production, I’m sure. And I hope I’m looking (and feeling) better as the week progresses. One week of video down, one more to go. I can only imagine what the Directors of Camp Magic MacGuffin will cook up for us as we round out the Summer session of ds106!
