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Video Prep Work

Tuesday, July 10th, 2012

Video week is really two weeks! Oh, what fun!

Last week we were doing a lot of prep work, familiarizing ourselves with the available software programs for video editing and starting to plan our assignment completion for the unit of study in ds106. Here are the assignments that I’ve scoped out and started planning:

Video Assignments 376—Return to the Silent Era (5 stars) gave me the challenge of using a modern movie trailer and creating a silent, black and white version reminiscent of the Silent Film era of cinematography. I’m going to use the trailer for Act of Valor, a movie from last year where the “actors” are genuine Navy Seals. I think this trailer will lend itself nicely to this task.

 

For Video Assignment 435—Serenity now! (3 stars), I will make a calming video like those displayed in a spa or used for meditation. I find the beach, especially at sunrise to be a soothing, peaceful environment for me the walk, think, reflect and just exist. On a trip to the Bahamas a few years ago, I was trying to use the time away to put things into perspective and re-prioritize my life. My soundtrack for this vacation was Led Zepplin…mostly because I love the lyrics, the melodies and the instrumentals in the songs. For these reasons, I will create a video of a beach sunrise, overlaying it with at least one Led Zepplin song. The hard part will be choosing which song to use…maybe Kashmir or something similar.

While I would love to go to the beach to film the video myself, my Outer Banks vacation isn’t until September, so I will be using a video from Creative Commons licensed video from YouTube (with the proper credits, of course) like this one:

 

Video Assignment 463—Watching Movies with the Stereo On (3 stars) directs me to take a movie clip and replace the original audio track with a song that somehow fits the movie scene. I picked the arrow roulette scene in the hilarious movie Grown Ups. I’m thinking I’ll dub “Moves Like Jagger” by Maroon 5 over it.

Stay tuned for the final products of these assignments!

That’s all for now, but I did get a great idea for a video assignment to add to the repository! I hope I have the time to flesh it out and develop an example later this week!

Posted in Assignments, bunk2, ds106, ds106 Reflections, magicmacguffin, preproduction, umwsum12, video assignments | Comments Off on Video Prep Work

Last week’s Daily Creates

Tuesday, July 10th, 2012

Although I did these last week, I’m just getting the blog post done for them. Sorry for keeping you suspense, but I am slightly behind on my blogging due to an injury I sustained over the weekend. Wish it was at least a good story to tell but it’s not. Just a stupid accident at home that left me with a concussion and a massive headache for a few days. Feeling well enough today to get back to the grind, so here we go…

tdc 177—Take a picture that presents wildness.

Wild Butterfly on Wild Flower

I took this beautiful image in my mother’s garden last week. Even with the crazy heat we’ve been having here in Virginia, the flowers are flourishing, attracting wild butterflies and bees. It was amazing to watch them and try to capture a pretty photo. This image was made possible by the incredible zoom on my camera. I was able to watch for a distant and zoom it on the resting butterfly.

 

tdc 179—Make a photograph of a plastic object that you’ve used today.

Plastics Keep Me Cool

My favorite plastic accessory of the past week has been my water bottles! The heat has been nearly unbearable and I am not going anywhere with one! This one was fresh from the frig and immediately formed condensation when I step outside. Simple point and shot image…no fancy imagery here.

Two more daily creates coming next week…

 

 

Posted in bunk2, Daily Creates, ds106, magicmacguffin, tdc177, tdc179, umwsum12, Weekly Recaps | Comments Off on Last week’s Daily Creates

Home Stretch!

Monday, July 9th, 2012

Sorry for my voice on this recording. I had my first major set of technical difficulties, which is why this is may be a little late. My microphone stopped working so I had to borrow my sisters laptop to create my video and her microphone is horrible, but it works. I was able to actually edit everything on my computer though. It was fairly simple, I just inserted my daily creates at the end and then in the middle of my video I inserted a segment from my Schneider’s List clip.

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Parent Traps and Dance Battles?

Monday, July 9th, 2012

I absolutely love the Parent-Trap, it is one of the few movies I can watch over and over again. This is one of the funny prank scenes from it and I thought with the action in this, you do not really need words to describe what is going on so it would be perfect for the silent film assignment. For this movie I would probably just change the contrast so that it is in all black and white. I would also split the scenes so that it is more choppy looking, like old films were.

My other Pre-Production assignment is the play by play video assignment. I recorded a “dance battle” between some friends at a wedding a couple months back and I plan on voicing over a play by play on it. Unfortunately I recorded it with a friends camera so I cannot upload the video right now. But he is going to send it to me via email so I can do the voice over. I am able to watch the video from his Facebook right now so i can get some ideas of what I want to say.

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Heart Wrenching

Monday, July 9th, 2012

We had an assignment to pick a movie that represents the best qualities of a compelling film, I choose “Schindler’s List.” It was listed on AFI’s list of 100 best films, and I remember seeing it in high school and how, well heart wrenching it was. If I had to classify it into a genre I would say documentary. I mean the movie is called SCHINDLER’S List, it is mostly about the actions of Oskar Schindler during World War II. Based off of the TV Trope Site, it could also be specifically classified as a Military and Warfare Troupe, a WWII troupe. The story itself is what initially makes this movie stand out amongst others, but after doing some reading from Roger Ebert, I realized that there was much more to it.

The above video is of some different clips I put together from Schindler’s List. In the first few scenes you see Schindler, played by Liam Neeson who I am a big fan of, being shot at an angle that is above us, the audience, and he is to the right. This  could symbolize his superiority over what he is looking down upon, which is the chaos from the Nazis attacking the Jews. Since he is positioned to the right of the screen I think it is symbolizing that he is above his fellow Nazi Germans. He is different, good. Following this we see a little girl in red, she is the only color in the scenes. The fact that she stands out from the chaos and oblivious represents her innocence, and at this point in the movie, Schindler’s view on the treatment of the Jews is changed.

The next segment we have a man offering a ring to Schindler and the man says “whoever saves one life saves the world entire.” He and everyone else is thanking Schindler for saving over a thousand Jewish lives. The fact that Schindler is to the left in the scene probably represents the guilt he feels for not saving more lives or changing his attitude about the Jews sooner.

Posted in analyzethis, bunk2, magicmacguffin, umwsum12 | Comments Off on Heart Wrenching

Analyzing The Lord of the Rings

Monday, July 9th, 2012

The first time I went to see The Fellowship of the Ring I was only 9 years old so even though I really liked the movie I could not fully appreciate it mostly due to that fact that the wraiths really creeped me out. I have watched all of them many times sense then and I think they are three of the best movies I have ever seen. I think they were successful for many reasons the most of which is how I was dragged into the story and how they used so many elements to portray what was happening. The first thing that pops to mind when I think of this is the music choices for lord of the rings. Below I have an example of how they used slow sad music to portray the death of Haldir. The music selection in this movie was excellent and I believe that was key in its success the producers did an excellent job of using music that properly portrays the emotions they are try to portray to the viewers.

The other element I wanted to talk about was the coloring or lighting used in the Lord of the Rings. Below I have a clip of Gandolfs charge at Helms deep, the whole sequence of scenes before this were of the intense battle to hold the fortress and the whole time it was night and dark which portrayed an dark feeling of lack of hope, it leads you to thinking that there is no hope. Then finally in this seen it is dawn and just when it seems they are riding out to die on the hill there is Gandolf in all white with the light of the rising sun behind him. That picture just changes your perspective immediately, you all of a sudden believe that there is hope and they will win. All of those emotions are enhanced by the great use of color and lighting in the movie if you take away that contrast and make everything bright and sunny there would the movies would not have been as intense or entertaining. I chose these to topics because they were the easiest to show with videos but there were many other factors that are the reasons why this movie was so compelling that it made it to the top 100 such as the acting, special effects, and plot/story but I just chose two so maybe another time on the other ones.

Posted in analyzethis, Assignments, bunk2, magicmacguffin, umwsum12 | Comments Off on Analyzing The Lord of the Rings

Pre- Production Re Dub

Monday, July 9th, 2012

So I am a bit hesitant to re do or re dub any thing to do with the Duke because we all know its all classic stuff but when I was little this was one of my favorite movie scenes because I always thought it was funny how they are fighting in the mud. So my plan to re dub this is first I am going to replace the music with something modern. The hardest part is the script and deciding what to have them say. Im working on modernizing them and making them fit but at the same time they have to make sense and hopefully some humor too.

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Return to the Silent Era: Pre Work

Monday, July 9th, 2012

So I chose a clip from the movie the departed because the movie itself reminded me of an old time gangster movie you know like an old Al Capone movie or something like that> I want to see how a clip from the movie when edited an appear to be an old silent film gangster movie that is my goal. First I would change the coloring to black and white to give it that old time feel. I would also want to add a border to the screen if possible to give it an extra vintage effect. The next thing is the music has to be changed so I will delete the old audio and add some music that is more appropriate for the silent era. So far I have found some older music already and I am working on making the rest of the changes so its a work in progress.

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Impending Zombie Apocalypse

Saturday, July 7th, 2012

So DS106 weekly assignment for last week was: a group radio show which sounded interesting. I joined my Camp bunkhouse (Wäscälly Wäbbits (sic)) buddies: Mike Berta, Chanda Cowger, Ben Harwood, Kevin Murphy and Ciara Norquist, the task was:

In each group, each person is “responsible” for 5-7 excellent minutes of the radio show. If they want to work in pairs, the minutes add up (2 people = 10-14 minutes, etc.) Ideally, the final shows should then be between 25 and 50 minutes.

Mike Berta came up with the title of our show: Impending Zombie Apocalypse ala War of the Worlds, which I must say worried me a bit. A lot of DS106ers seem to be steeped in US movie culture and I am not. I am also not much of a horror fan.

I decided I would think of a few angles I could take and opened a google doc where I wrote:

I’d like to do a segment on ‘other zombies’ eg not movie or fiction including some of the following:

Thinking I could avoid the imaginative.

Mike Berta suggested: How about segments where we are reporting from our location what is happening.

This went down well with the group. We collected a bunch of links to audio, etc on the google doc and went our separate ways with the odd tweet, mail and update to the doc keeping us in sync.

I started working on a script of sorts, I focused on the music of Fela, and kept references to zombies vague, hoping that they could be interpreted metaphorically as well as literally. I tried to get in some links to ds106 but kept them vague too. This is what I came up with. Recorded in a straightforward way in GarageBand.

I got my daughter Christine to help with the recording, she was a great help as shew has a good ear for what will work and how to use voice. Recording a fictional piece (even writing one) was a bit of a stretch, I’ve recorded plenty of podcast but always non-fiction and without much attempt to build atmosphere.

It was then up to Mike Berta to put this together is some way. I had quite a busy week so didn’t pay a lot of attention, but Mike got an edit finished and it was played on DS106. As it was played at 3am here I didn’t hear it. I did download the mp3 file Zombie Free Radio DS106

I was impressed by how well all of my bunkmates contributions came out and even more impressed by how Mike had managed to weave them together into a coherent and compelling whole.

Later I listen to the whole Tuesday show which also had the Bunkhouse 2 contribution. This was surrounded by Alan Levine’s discussion, atmospheric build up and live chat with conversations with Jennifer Orr from Bunkhouse 4 and our own Mike Berta. Fascinating to see how very loose directions, make a radio show, between spatially and culturally diverse folk can come together.

Tech Tips

I was verery interested in how Alan wove together audio from iTunes, his browser, and live skype. We have done similar things over at Radio EDUtalk, but he added a killer feature, the skype folk could here iTunes in the same way as the radio broadcast. I tweeted out to cogdog and got pointed to this amazing post My Newest Rube Goldberg ds106 Broadcast Machine: Ladiocast + Nicecast – CogDogBlog, looking forward to implementing this for next sessions Radio Edutalk

A great assignment that I had more fun than I expected and has me thinking about lots of things.

Posted in audio, bunk2, magicmacguffin, openonline | Comments Off on Impending Zombie Apocalypse

Readin’ Gone With the Wind (the Movie, not the Book)

Saturday, July 7th, 2012

This week, a we start the examine video in DS106, we examined some movie reading tips from Roger Ebert’s blog “How to read a movie“. our challenge was to apply these concepts to a favorite movie or other compelling film. I chose to examine one of my all-time favorites, a classic in cinematography, Gone with the Wind.

I’ve read many books that later became movies. This is one of the very few where I did not intentional read the book first. Reading a movie is very different from reading a book. Instead of translating the words to images in your imagination, the scene is given to you and you are reading the placement of characters, positioning of people and things, camera angles, lighting, music, etc. to interpret underlying or hidden messages, intentions or influences.

In clip below, Rhett declares to Scarlett in his domineering style: “No, I don’t think I will kiss you. Although you need kissing badly. That’s what’s wrong with you. You should be kissed, and often, and by someone who knows how.”

Though some of the dialogue is antagonistic, both characters start by continually moving to the right, evoking a positive perspective on the scene. Rhett is positioned on the right appearing dominant over Scarlett on the left. Scarlett’s severely upturned face is tilted upward and to the right, into Rhett, expressing imbalance in the exchange. I think in this case, Scarlett is presenting herself submissively to Rhett, despite her sassy attitude and declaration to the contrary. At the end of this segment, she walks away from Rhett, into the camera’s foreground in a left sweeping movement. This accentuates a helpless, resigned feeling for her, but I think it fails to make her dominant. I found it interesting to note that despite Rhett’s rejection, she is still glancing to the right, back at him, indicating a continued positive regard for him.

 

The next scene I examined is the famous “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” ending to the movie. Here, Rhett walks away from Scarlett and seemingly out of her life. Scarlett is now positioned on the right with Rhett on the left suggesting she is the more positive one in this situation. During and immediately following his departure, she is facing and looking to the left, negatively into her past. After she collapses on the stairs and hears or remembers previous dialogue about her home, Tara, she begins to face right. Speaking the infamous line “after all tomorrow is another day”, she is looking dreamily to the  right with the camera angled slightly from below her eye line, enhancing her in this scene and expressing a positive attitude toward her future. This is also reinforced in the closing shot, where she is silhouetted against the sunset overlooking Tara, again facing right toward Tara. Tara position on the right in this scene suggests it is her positive influence and hope.

Gone with the Wind fits nicely into the drama genre. Within any given genre, there are tropes, or storytelling conventions. This classic film from 1939 is an example of a Bittersweet Ending trope, more specifically the Senseless Sacrifice trope. There are many more tropes at play in this film, throughout different scenes and characters. Discover more about what trope are at play in your favorite movie at TVTropes.org.

 

 

 

Posted in analyzethis, bunk2, ds106, ds106 Reflections, magicmacguffin, umwsum12, video assignments | Comments Off on Readin’ Gone With the Wind (the Movie, not the Book)

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