bunk3 — Camp Magic MacGuffin

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Wednesday, July 25th, 2012

For this assignment, I had to take components from different movies and mash them up into one. It’s pretty cool. I was able to change anything, the title of the movie, the main image, the caption, etc. To do this assignment I began by browsing through my movies. I choice Along Came Polly with Jennifer Aniston and Ben Stiller. The polt is about an outgoing girl who is fun, spontaneous and afraid of commitment and a man who is too organized and “safe.” He got married and his wife cheated on him on their honeymoon with the tour guide. I captured an image in the movie where he was begging her to stay and be with him. Then I choice the caption and title from the movie called “She is out of your league.” I thought the movies worked well together, because they both represent similar stories. The beautiful spontaneous girl and the too organized, safe guy.

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Creativity for Hire?

Wednesday, July 25th, 2012

I just finished my first commissioned video project. The “commissioned” aspect brought a whole perspective.

It’s not that the expectations were high. The professional association to which I have belonged since I became a teacher decades ago is doing a website makeover and wanted a video to promote the annual conference coming up in March 2013. Specifications were that I use the Ken Burns effect to bump up the visual interest from a plain slide show.

So bump it up, I did. The conference theme, “Investigate That Story,” was inspired by a quote by David Coleman, one of the authors for the Common Core State Standards:

Read like a detective and write like an investigative reporter.

And the conference logo has a bit of film noir going for it. At least that’s what I see with the kid in the trench coat and fedora.

So I enlisted the help of a dashing young friend from my teen book and writers’ club who fancies himself an actor and taped a simple opening and close that I made black and white, found some film noir-like music, and then simply added some author promo shots and book covers.

Biggest lesson was creating a lead-in to my actor’s “hot tip” line. I’m sure public library patrons thought I was “casing the joint” as I attempted pan after pan on different library shelves trying to find the perfect or at least less Blair Witch-like move. I wanted to set the mood with music before I came to the actor so I needed a rather long visual sequence. Adding the Coleman quote gave me a chance to lengthen the lead-in purposely.

So here’s my completed video:

I’m not sure my educator-friends know quite what to make of this but they seem okay with it as long as I got the Ken Burns moves on the images going. What if they had hated the film noir effect? Glad I didn’t have to face that because, though I believe that constraints inspire creativity; I also know that all the joy of creativity can be sucked out if you don’t have some freedom and space to realize your vision.

I’m definitely not ready technologically or emotionally for commissioned work.

Got a question for you iMovie fans. Can I insert an image and add text? I resorted to PowerPoint to create the brief bio slides for each author but, surely, I can accomplish this in iMovie.

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Sing My Life

Tuesday, July 24th, 2012

We all have that one song that describes our life. Sadly, most people are ashamed to tell how they REALLY feel. I know I personally don’t share too many of my secrets and hurts with people. I sometimes feel misunderstood but I try my hardest to maintain a positive attitude.

This assignment that I am creating is called “Sing My Life.” You take that one song that describes your life and take at least 5 lines from the song and tell why you can relate.

My song is:

“The One Before” x K’La

My Five Lines:

1. “hurting for years but she hid it, she told you she healed but she didn’t”

There has been a lot of time my feelings have been hurt by other people. But I hate having issues with people. So instead of me telling people how they have destroyed my feelings I would rather hid it.

2. “she’s been hurt, she’s been torn, she’s been lied to once before; so if you’re gonna love her then baby you better love her more than the one before”

I had been in a 4 yr relationship and it was hard. We were both young so there was a lot of learning to do. I had been hurt, torn, and lied to. After leaving that relationship, I found a new “friend”, but I was so scared that I would be hurt by him also. So I told him about everything I had been through, what I did and did not like, and what hurt me. And I told him, if he wanted to be with me, he had to do things better than the one before

3. “she already think you’re probably hiding more than she knows”

I have trust issues. From friends, family, and relationships. I always think that people are hiding things from me. Not all bad things, but it could be some good things too. So sometimes, I second guess a lot of people and things out of fear that they are hiding things from me

4. “but God gave her that butt and God gave that frame, and God gave her that smile, and God gave her that face and God gave her this town and God gave her that name.”

Not to sound conceited, but my body is shape different that others. I have what people call “a video vixen shape.” I used to hate it because guys would hit on me and touch me in school. For the longest time I wore baggy clothes so no one would violate me at school. I have a big smile and I hate it. I show all of my teeth when I smile and I only have one dimple. I also hate my name. It sounds like a boy’s name and it’s ghetto to me. But then as I grew up, I started to appreciate my body, my smile, and my name… because God created me this way for a reason.

5. “being mistreated you act like you didn’t see it until she walked out that door.”

I super strongly hate when people treat people badly thinking that will stay forever. Everyone has that one person that they depend on and that is perfectly fine. BUT make sure that you treat that person right. In most cases, people can use people over and over again until that person gets tired of being used. Then they walk away. Personally, I hate apologies. If you didn’t treat me right at first, don’t wait until after I leave to miss me.

This assignment is easy. All you do is-

1. embed the song into your post (however you choose to)

2. take the 5 lines and quote them

3. explain why you like them

It is really that simple and it also will let the viewer see a deeper side of you.

For more. Click Here. –>>[Sing My Life]<<–

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Pause [Four] A Moment

Tuesday, July 24th, 2012

The first assignment I created, I wanted it to be simple yet fun. I thought about the daily creates we have done and just assignments in general.

I personally dislike taking pictures of myself. I am not a very photogenic person because I don’t really have that “beautiful look.” But there are times when I take a picture and I think, “awwh that was cute.” So in creating an assignment I thought about those moments. Those moments when you just feel beautiful. And it is those moments that you want to pause and just be grateful for the beauty you see in yourself.

I like and chose this picture because I have my hair curly. I NEVER wear my hair curly because it tickles my face a lot. I also love this picture because you can see my one dimple showing. Yes, I only have one dimple.

The editing changes I made were simple color changes basically. One of the pictures is in an antique looking style. I really like those “old time” looking pictures because it makes me appreciate the change in photography over time. Another of the pictures just has them “orangist” glossy look to it. I personally like it because it makes my skin look flawless and my teeth look SUPER white. The last of the photos has a purple color on it. PURPLE IS MY FAVORITE COLOR IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD. I sometimes wish there was purple snow(why I’m not sure).

This is why I called this assignment, “Pause [Four] A Moment.” Here is what you do.

1. Take a picture that you like of yourself.

2. Edit it 3 different ways

3. Put all four of the pictures in a collage together

4. Upload it to flickr

5. Embed it in your post

6. Explain why you love this picture and why you made the changes you did

It is just that simple. It gives you, the artist, a chance to take a pretty picture of them and make it into different pictures. It allows you to see yourself differently. You can just make simple color changes, or drastic changes to show why you are grateful for your beauty.

For More. Click Here. –>>[Pause Four a Moment]<<–

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Mashup Those Movies

Sunday, July 22nd, 2012

Cady talking about Regina in Mean Girls: “I have this theory that if you cut off all her hair she’d look like a British man.”

For my first Mashup Assignment, I chose Mashup Those Movies. Naturally, I chose a movie poster for Mean Girls and edited on Aviary. I Google Imaged Mean Girls movie posters, and I found a poster where the girls were making “shh” signals. I thought it would be funny to remix this picture with a movie called She’s the Man, because the caption on the She’s the Man movie poster says, “Everybody has a secret…,” so by combining the two, it would suggest that one of the Plastics (from Mean Girls), was a man, something that provided me with great amusement. I used my computer’s photo editing program, iPhoto, to crop the “She’s the Man” movie title and the “Everybody has a secret..” movie caption from the original poster. I saved them to my desktop and imported the files to my Mean Girls poster that I had already uploaded to Aviary. I positioned them as I liked and saved the file!

Could it be Regina? Watch the movie and you’ll find out…

Posted in bunk3, magicmacguffin, Mashup Assignments, MashupAssignments, MashupAssignments534, umwsum12 | Comments Off on Mashup Those Movies

Remix This

Sunday, July 22nd, 2012

REMIX: To combine or edit existing materials to produce something new.

For this write-up assignment, I watched Everything is a Remix, Part 1: The Song Remains the Same by Kirby Ferguson. Remix originally began in music. Now, remix happens everywhere. It’s easy to do and anyone can do it. The video shows examples of Led Zeppelin using lyrics from songs earlier produced. They did not attribute the lyrics to the original artists. Remix happens a lot in the music industry, but credit is given to the original artist. Also, Led Zeppelin didn’t change their lyrics enough to even make them seem original. Remixing can be legal, if done properly. In fact, much of the entertainment industry is a form of remix. Now, Led Zeppelin is copied by many other artists. Karma?

I also watched the Disney copyright video, because I adore Disney! The Disney video was absolutely great. I loved how it used so much remix to explain fair use and copyright. The title was also very witty (A Fair(y) Use Tale). I think that it’s important to follow these rules, because people should get credit for their ideas. It’s cheating when you just steal from someone else. It is about money. If you take someone else’s ideas and make money off them, how is that fair? It also costs money to PUT a copyright on something.

What can be copyrighted? Books, plays, music, dance, movies, and pictures. This video taught me that you cannot copyright ideas, only the form an idea takes can be copyrighted. One has to expand the ideas to visuals in order to copyright. Copyright used to only last for a fix amount of time, only 14 years. Then it would fall into the public domain, which means it’s free for anyone to use. Copyright keeps getting longer, their is even a lifetime limitation. Some copyrights last forever. There are limitations on copyright use. You can borrow a small amount of the copyright. The nature, amount, and commercial impact of the work are factors of fair use. The creator of the movie believes it is under protection because the movie is using the clips from the Disney movies to explain copyright laws.

For my examples of remix, I looked at the following:

Star Wars Call Me Maybe

This video used lyrics from a very popular song, Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” and transformed them into Star Wars voices. It also used clips from the Star Wars movies depicting the character who was saying (singing) the given lyrics. I thought this video was pretty funny. It must have taken a lot of work too.

Buffy vs. Edward: Twilight Remixed

Though I was never particularly interested in the Buffy series and I am far from a Twilight fan, I chose to look at this video because I figured it could be kind of funny! Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a popular television show about a vampire that stopped airing about ten years back. Twilight, in turn, is a current popular book and movie series about vampires. Though Buffy is a bit dated, it is funny to think about her meeting Edward Cullen, one of the vampires in Twilight. The video took clips of Edward from the Twilight movies and combined them with clips of Buffy, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, to create the a video of the two characters meeting. I thought the video was a very good example of how the two vampires would react if they did happen to meet. Even though I haven’t watched much of either, I found Edward very very creepy! It was funny how intense and serious he is, while Buddy is so matter-of-fact and sarcastic. What would Bella think???

30 Classic Music Albums Recreated With Lego

And finally, after realizing Obamaicon wouldn’t work on my computer, I chose to look at the remix example 30 Classic Music Albums Recreated With Lego, and was pleasantly surprised! I thought this was really cool. What a thoughtful, creative project to take on. I really liked the Beatles Abbey Road one. This site is a wonderful example of how one person’s ideas can spark another’s, creating multiple interesting results. I think if the artists of these albums saw their covers made out of legos, they would be pretty excited. This site is an example of remix, because the author used the art/photos on album covers and recreated them using legos. This was my favorite example of remix that I looked at.

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Week 9 ; Daily Creates

Sunday, July 22nd, 2012

“[Illustrate attraction in a photo]”

This is a photo of 2 bears that are in love, clearly they are “beary” attracted to each other.

“[Take a picture of yourself imitating some classic rage faces]”

I really don’t get mad, but my “rage” sometimes consist of me crossing my eyes. Why? I’ll never know, but this is what happens.. = )

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Remix Assignment

Sunday, July 22nd, 2012

For my remix assignment, I chose the “Re-brand ‘Em” Design Assignment paired with the Remix card, “Pollock Style.” I chose one of my favorite “Re-brand ‘Em” submissions, “America Runs on DS106″ by Stephanie and remixed it as a Jackson Pollock painting. A little while back, I wrote a blog post and designed my own Jackson Pollock painting, so this remix assignment particularly interested me. I used my favorite site Aviary Image Editor to paint overtop of the original image. I enjoy Jackson Pollock’s style of painting; it’s carefree, yet he has a uniform style. I thought Stephanie‘s assignment was really creative and I decided to add a little bit of my own creativity to it!! Enjoy!

Credit to Stephanie for the original “Re-brand ‘Em” Design Assignment.

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Sunsets

Sunday, July 22nd, 2012

I am the kind of person who chases the sun just to see it set (literally). My life’s goal is to watch the sunset in all seven continents. So far I chased sunsets in four different continents; North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. I decided to make a collage with all the sunset pictures I took from over the years. I used photovisi.com. I uploaded all the pictures and it did the work for me. Seriously, life is so beautiful (when it’s so easy).

Enjoy the sunset

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Introducing a Familiar Face

Sunday, July 22nd, 2012

A few months back I had the idea to compose a documentary about a topic that has been lingering in my mind for years. The concept of modesty. Modesty comes in many different forms. Everyone has their own perception of modesty. I was particularly interested to view this concept with Islam and how outsiders (non-Muslims) view Muslims who cover their head or dress more conservative. I was inspired to ask everyone on campus about their views on Muslim women (and women in general) wearing the hijab (veil) or dressing more conservative. This video was intended to open people’s eyes to a new and well-informed perspective on this matter. Misconceptions about the veiled women, yet appreciated self-worth and hidden admiration was discovered when interviewing people on college campus. I used iMovies to edit this movie and with the share option I uploaded it directly to YouTube. It got creative with sound effects and added music toward the end of the video to make it a “legitimate” documentary that is worth sharing. After I completed this project I realized there were many editing mistakes I made that I will learn from next time around. Currently I am working on another documentary that should be done soon (stay toned).