magicmacguffin — Camp Magic MacGuffin

Archive for the ‘magicmacguffin’ Category

Friday, July 20th, 2012

Anyone has potential to be creative and express themselves through different mediums. It can vary between taking pictures, making music, editing, painting, singing, dancing, and the list just goes on and on.

According to Austin Kleon who wrote “Steal like an Artist” creativity can be for anyone as long as you are in the right environment with the right influences. He believes that everyone is a mashup of whatever is let into an individuals life. If your open to ideas and creative thoughts then they can influence your creative thoughts and works too. I agree with Kleon with this idea of “Steal like an Artist” creativity should be shared with everyone and not limited to the individual who thought of it first. Ideas are always a build off of another one and this is how people grow as individuals in a creative mind st.

Girl Talk, a DJ who is notorious for taking songs and remixing them together makes great mashups and uses his creativity for his followers benefits. The music that Girl Talk mashes together is a controversy that it could be illegal and copyright violations. If this was the case, there would be tons of criminals in this world by downloading music or making their own mashups. I believe as long as credit is given to the original song or work of art then it should be shared for others to use. In all likely hood their work was probably built off of someone else in the past too.

The explanation of copyright through Disney characters was hilarious. Disney is an intimidating company when it comes to copyright violations and has the power/money to take just about anyone down who does something illegal with their work.

There are two sides to this argument. The first one is what I have stated above but the other side is for the artists who have to make a living off of their work. If people are using their music, pictures, and other forms of art then they cannot make money and all of their hard work has not been repayed. I believe people should be more informed about sites like Creative Commons, freesound.org and other websites that allow for the use of sharing creativity throughout the world. If more people knew about it then there would be more to go around. However I don’t think that all pieces of creativity should be shared because people do need to make money and want to see results for their hard work.

Examples of Remixes

“Mary Poppins” flipped to a horror film. Music really does reflect the mood of a movie or segment of video. It is remixed from being about a wonderful and perfect nanny to being a horrifying crazy nanny from hell. This was remixed by Chris Rule, and he did a great job of using the Mary Poppin’s trailer to come off as a completely different film.

Buffy vs. Edward -Twilight Remix

If you read my earlier blog post about mashing together all the Twilight trailers then it would be obvious that I couldn’t resist the urge to watch this remix. Jonathan Mclntosh took clippings from Twilight to portray Edward as a complete creep and stalker. I will admit he did a fantastic job it was very funny to watch! Instead of the typical girl falling for the vampire allure, Buffy who is in fact a vampire slayer is completely creeped out by him. The story flows together for the whole segment. I did notice at minute 5:24 a scene from Harry Potter is taken when Robert Pattinson (Edward) is killed by Lord Voldermort. Which was interesting to throw in there but it did add the effect of Edward getting killed by Buffy. By remixing scenes together like this, you can totally change the persona of a character in just a matter of minutes.

Star Wars and Call Me Maybe

Call Me Maybe is one of the most popular songs currently, that is being remixed or mocked. This is the most creative one I have seen so far. Like the Disney explantation of Copyright, the dialogue of Star Wars characters is used to talk out the lyrics of Call Me Maybe. Layered on top is the instrumentals to the song. Its a remix because it is taking too different outlets and merged together to create one.

Posted in bunk4, ds106, magicmacguffin, RemixThis, umwsum12 | Comments Off on Remix, Mashups, Creativity

Lethal Weapon Series: 4 Movies, 1 Trailer

Friday, July 20th, 2012

Mashup Assignment 135 (4 stars) called for making a movie trailer by taking a trilogy, or any series of movies, and combining scenes from all the trailers to make one trailer. This was an easier assignment, and considering all my problem with video editing, I figured I could probably handle this one with a minimum of frustration. For the subject of this assignment, I decided to make a trailer montage for one of my favorite movie series, Lethal Weapon.

Turns out I was right. After downloading the four individual HD trailers for the Lethal Weapon movies from YouTube, I imported them all into VideoPad to splice them together. Starting with the first movie, Lethal Weapon, I cropped off extra material at the end of the trailer that I didn’t want to keep. Then I added the next trailer for Lethal Weapon 2, to the video track immediately after the first one. Again, some trimming to make the resulting “uni-trailer” a little shorter and transitions less obvious, I added the third and fourth videos trailers for Lethal Weapon 3 and Lethal Weapon 4. Admittedly, the transitions between segments are not as smooth and more obvious as would have liked, but the damned video editing software is making my crazy, so I did my best and settled for that.

And if you haven’t seen the Lethal Weapon movies yet…I hope this teases you into it! Working on this task has reignited my love for these movies so I see a movie marathon coming in the near future!

Posted in Assignments, bunk2, ds106, magicmacguffin, Mashup Assignments, MashupAssignments, MashupAssignments135, umwsum12 | Comments Off on Lethal Weapon Series: 4 Movies, 1 Trailer

Radio Campfire Show

Friday, July 20th, 2012

Via Flickr with thanks to r_rahul

Last night Ben Harwood and Ben Rimes joined me to put on a DS106/MagicMacguffin Radio Campfire. We were graced with stories and songs that helped us enjoy our time.

The appeal of Internet Radio is unexpected. I previously hosted a podcast and blog about the doctoral process, so the notion of my voice on the Internet isn’t foreign to me. Being live, though, that was something entirely different.

How did this come to pass?

You’ll remember, that I represented my DS106/Magic Macguffin team’s radio stories a few weeks back with a Zombie Underground Radio themed show. The show was done in a few steps.

Alan Levine (@cogdog) setup the live stream on DS106 Radio using quite an elaborate setup.
Called me via Skype
Played the uploaded recording while we were on Skype together
Interviewed me live via Skype on DS106 Radio before and after the recording aired

It was a unique experience and one that I hadn’t expected to capture my interest.

Then last week, Martha Burtis (@mburtis) hosted radio panel using a similar setup but substituting TeamSpeak for Skype. This change allowed DS106ers to enjoy a live panel discussion about the strange goings on at Camp Magic MacGuffin. I adopted my alter ego (@theunclehector) and joined some other characters on the show to uncover just what was happening at camp.

This, again, was a unique experience for me and it inspired my next step which was to host a live show on DS106 Radio without on air support from the cadre of expert instructors in DS106/Magic MacGuffin.

So, the idea of having a campfire/pow-wow on the radio was born. I needed some participants who would be willing to pull up a log and weave us a tale befitting a campfire scene. Two Open Online DS106ers answered the call.

Ben Harwood (@benjaminharwood) – who told us some personal experiences about his travels and various run-ins with interesting characters.
Ben Rimes (@techsavvyed) – who told us a story about his travel overseas and spectacular experience with fireworks and pyrotechnics

Intermixed in the stories we threw in some campfire songs. Interestingly, our listeners joined in on Twitter with the sing-a-long. The audience made the whole experience even more lively and enjoyable.

The Bens and I came together to make a radio experience for ourselves and the class. It was terrific playing off each other and chatting around our campfire. I always expect wondrous things to occur when educational technologists come together. We are the best kind of nerds, in my opinion.

Via Flickr with thanks to GoRun26

I didn’t expect how Internet Radio would capture my attention but it truly sparked some thinking about how live interaction and play can generate a community (of any kind really but) of learning in an online course. Opening the airwaves for student, faculty, learner, lurker interplay allows us to give a voice to the class and encourage some different experiences.

This gives rise to how Internet Radio, like DS106 Radio, can be used in all of education. The cost of Internet Radio is nominal unless you opt for a hosting service and higher than needed bit rate, which makes it a viable tool for educational environments. This gets even cheaper if you can re-purpose an internal server for your radio station. Infrastructure.

Now we need some ideas on how to use it. Well, auto-dj is one way to use it and that gives a nice connection throughout a course or set of courses. As DS106 is teaching us, though, live radio is the real magic where unicorns and rainbows meet learning and where real education can take place. Where students, faculty, and administrators can come and interact with the outcome being fun, learning, and excitement for the community.

Ideas could include the basic, and much beloved, college radio stations which are becoming defunct as traditional radio broadcasts to course specific streams broadcasting content to the masses.

It so happened that I was approached by a faculty member about creating some digital humanities experiences centered around the upcoming 2012 election. As part of our thinking, I am forwarding the idea of an Internet Radio series that will host panels, discussions, debates, stories, exposes, etc from our faculty, students, and administrators. Giving students a live voice is where we can propel their thinking beyond the rote to the higher order stuff we really enjoy.

Posted in bunk2, ds106, Magic MacGuffin, magicmacguffin, openonline | Comments Off on Radio Campfire Show

Mmm Smoothies

Friday, July 20th, 2012

The goal of the “Consumer Mashup” was to take a store that you shop at often and incorporate the good you usually buy with the logo of that store. I am feign for smoothies and always go to Tropical Smoothie or Robecks. Lately however I have been choosing Tropical Smoothie. Not entirely sure why…maybe because of price or maybe because I feel cool drinking a “tropical” smoothie.

Regardless I decided to make my own logo for Tropical Smoothie instead of using theirs. I replaced the “i” in tropical and smoothie with an image of a smoothie drink from this establishment. Then I used PowerPoint to get a tropical/island themed background. I made the entire logo on PowerPoint. I made each letter a different color to make it vibrant and fun.

After I was finished I took a screen shot of the logo and uploaded it to FLICKR.

Tropical Smoothie ad © by katherinekd101

Posted in bunk4, ds106, magicmacguffin, MashupAssignments MashupAssignments120, umwsum12 | Comments Off on Mmm Smoothies

Twilight the Trailer Montage

Friday, July 20th, 2012

First off I would like to state, yes I am one of those people that actually enjoy watching the Twilight Saga… judge all you want.

For those of you who aren’t informed about the wonders of the Twilight Saga, there are four books. The last book (like Harry Potter) is made into two different movies, therefore there are five movies. I took a clipping from each movie trailer and edited them together. I used www.keepvid.com to download the YouTube trailers. I decided I wanted to make a story of the Twilight Saga through the trailer, but still leave some mystery at the end. For those of who are diehard fans like me there is no mystery. However for those of you who are interested in Twilight and learning about its ”fantasticness” this trailer will be a great introduction into the saga!

I used iMovie to merge together all the trailers. Since the trailers are already edited with music, all I had to do was put pieces together and hoped it would make sense. I faded in and out with sound to make a better transition.

Posted in bunk4, ds106, magicmacguffin, MashupAssignments MashupAssignments135, umwsum12 | Comments Off on Twilight the Trailer Montage

Post Card Home: Week 6

Friday, July 20th, 2012

Here we go again. I can’t believe it’s week 6 already. This is all happening so fast. These past few days have been really hectic, not because of DS106 but also because final exams for my classes in Tanzania are coming up and I am very nervous. Exams are in kiswahili, a language I did not know a word of 6 weeks ago, but now I am expected to take full exams in it (well isn’t that awkward). Anyway, this week has to be the lowest for me. I am extremely upset and disappointment at myself. I was not able to participate in the radio show because I had no internet access. I have also been studying for my exams and teaching english at the primary school downtown dar es salaam.

Putting excuses aside. This week I recorded my letter home. I added sound effects to show the environment I am in. For my last week in Tanzania, we went on a three day safari through serengeti national park. We observed the wild life and connected with nature. It was amazing.

I used freesound.org (don’t you just love it).

Posted in bunk3, magicmacguffin, umwsum12 | Comments Off on Post Card Home: Week 6

Music Mash Up

Friday, July 20th, 2012

Dj’s tend to remix different songs to make a fun and entertaining soundtrack to listen to. It may seem easy to merge together multiple songs, but after working on this assignment, I found it very challenging.

The goal was to take clips from different songs and merge them together to make one single song. I used Garage Band for this assignment. The songs included (in order):

One More Time -Daft Punk

La Vie – The Deans List ( The Deans List produces their own music but incorporates usually one or two other songs into their work)

Dancing in the Dark – Dev

Love on Top – Beyonce

Garage Band offers free sound clips to use in songs, or looping songs together. I used “Club Beats” and “Jingles” as transitional sounds. I wanted to do a remix based on a music genre of pop/dance/club something fun to listen to. In my opinion it takes a certain skill to mash music together and actually make it sound nice.

I imported each song and layered them on top of each other by a second or two. Once the segment of the song I wanted was over, I clipped it (or cropped) out.

Posted in bunk4, ds106, magicmacguffin, MashupAssignments MashupAssignments128, umwsum12 | Comments Off on Music Mash Up

Mashing Up Daily Creates

Friday, July 20th, 2012

I accepted cogdog’s challenge last week to do daily creates every day for seven days. As of today, I’m going on 8, but I haven’t done today’s yet. Anyway, since issuing his challenge there has been more consistent participation on The Daily Create site, so the timing was good to do Mashup Assignment 609 (5 stars).

I started by reviewing the TDC archives for July 11-17, 2012. Two of these were video so I decided to start with those and fit the others in like puzzle pieces! Starting with Martha’s mysterious The Most Amazing Technology video (tdc189), I downloaded it and imported it into VideoPad. I think this is when I decided to go with an ominous, mystery compilation, building on the mood of her video. Moving along, I assessed the other tdcs and proceeded to fit them together. I turned TDC 185 – tornado by Malyn Mawby into a video by applying the film effect to make it move and shimmy like a real tornado. Importing it back into VideoPad, I positioned it at the beginning of the track and overlayed Tdc190 boilingwater by Malyn Mawby as a soundtrack over the tornado for additional effect.

For the next segment, I used No TV. Just static (tdc187) by Audrey Watters. Overlayed on this segment of track is the Morse code sound bits from the NCH Sound Effects Library, included in VideoPad, and a short piece of TDC188 Telemarketing Call by mrswanson. I trimmed this soundclip down to fit the video piece and keep the overall project to a shorter time. I added two more Morse code sound bits on the end to transition into Martha’s technology video segment.

To wind down the entire project and include a few more tdc projects, I inserted a blank slide after her video to showcase My strongest attraction #tdc191 by Martha and emphasize her statement of being the most amazing thing she’s ever experienced. After that clip, I merged two photos, by inserting Jacques Cartier, Over the St. Lawrence by aforgrave (tdc184) into the video track and overlaying it with a cropped version of Rainbows by robertss (tdc186). To wrap it all up, I inserted scrolling credits to the contributor’s projects that helped create this compilation.

In the end, I used 8 tdcs instead of the required 7. This was a fun project to do, even though, yet again the final product is not exactly as fluid as I envisioned it to be.

I hope I’ve done cogdog and ds106 proud with this new Mashup Assignment!

Recap of all the bits and pieces that made this assignment special:

Posted in Assignments, bunk2, ds106, magicmacguffin, Mashup Assignments, MashupAssignments, MashupAssignments609, umwsum12 | Comments Off on Mashing Up Daily Creates

Radio Bumper

Friday, July 20th, 2012

Let’s just say I had no idea what the heck I was doing with this assignment. Not because it was difficult, but because my mind was all over the place with this one. While I was in Tanzania, I fell in love with swahili music. For this assignment, I decided to use one of my favorite songs in kiswahili called “Joanita.” I played around with the pitch and added swirling echoes. Again, garageband goes a long way.

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Dream Achieved

Friday, July 20th, 2012

Crossing the Border

In June 2012, I went to Vancouver, B.C. to speak on Digital Storytelling at the Northern Voice Social Media and Blogging Conference. I gathered quite a bit of multimedia in my basket and put it together as a little “this is my professional development” digital story.

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My sister Cheryl R. Long asked me about the same time to speak at her artists retreat on “Digital Storytelling as an Art Form.” I ended up talking about something else, but she had gotten it into my head that I needed to start thinking about how to be more artistic in my digital storytelling. This is my first answer to that question.