Archive for the ‘magicmacguffin’ Category

 

Today’s ds106radio call in show to talk about Camp Magic…

Thursday, July 12th, 2012



Today’s ds106radio call in show to talk about Camp Magic Macguffin was a debacle to me. False accusations came my way, Zazzy just hates and misttrusts everyone, Uncle Hector just giggled, Slide Guy mumbled vague poetry and innuendo about the joy of sliding, Mr E from CVI dropped and mumbled, but worse, worse was Joe Beets.

He falsely accuses me of being a hologram! Does a hologram bleed and bump into objects? He is the fake- He does not tweet, his blog has only a few posts and are full of promised of video and audio nevery published, and he has done nothing for ds106. There are no assignments done, no Daily Creates. He is the fake!

I Bleed I Am Real

Joe Beets is using methods of mis-direction and propaganda right out fo the McCarthy era- to what end? 

I appreciate greatly my colleague Martha’s firm support but something weird happened towards the end where she got all glib about what a great show it was and wonderful everyone was. How can anyone listening hear all the yelling and accusing think this was great?

Now everyone is saying camp is fake. We need you to stand up and affirm the reality of your Camp Magic Macguffin spirit. If you do not believe in McGuffy the mascot, he may die.

“Look How Happy She Is”

Thursday, July 12th, 2012


Laura Palmer & Donna Hayward

As mentioned in an earlier tutorial on assembling animated GIFs, I use MPEG StreamClip to select the clip’s start and end points. The selection is then trimmed and the frames are exported as individual png files. It is these individual image files that are then opened as layers in GIMP and then saved as the silent animated GIF file.

I rarely pay attention to the sound and dialog from the film while going about my process. But while working on this clip from the videotape that was found in Laura Palmer’s room, I couldn’t help but notice the line Agent Cooper said to Bobby Briggs durring Bobby’s questioning at the police station over Laura’s murder. This is one instance I wish it were possible to keep the audio linked to the animated GIF file.

Does anyone know if this is even possible?

Jaws Alternative Book Cover

Thursday, July 12th, 2012

I have a ton of awesome design work to show off from the Breakfast Club edition of ds106 (a.k.a the K12 edition :) ), but I want to take a quick moment and feature two alternative book cover assignments done by Anna. She had an idea for an alternative book cover for Peter Benchley’s Jaws, and frankly I think it is brilliant!

And as any gambler knows, keep going when you are on a roll, her next creation was a literal cover fro R.L Stine’s Goosebumps.

Brilliant! And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. What is immediately apparent to me is that they’re having fun doing it, and that’s a vision Tom Woodward has both articulated and embodied for years. What’s exciting to me is that ds106 has become a manifestation of that fun in my own teaching and learning like no other experience I’ve been part of before.  I’ll do a more comprehensive post about the awesome design work they churned out today, but for know enjoy the genius!

Not so 80s

Thursday, July 12th, 2012

The Noun Project credits:
Community by Mike Endale
Beach Ball by Tim Piper
Cap by Oliver Guin
Bicycle by Ugur Akdemir

The Gardening

Thursday, July 12th, 2012

Meanwhile 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.
  1. Took the clip from YouTube using Easy YouTube Downloader extension in Google Chrome
  2. Created an iMovie ’11 and imported the trailer
  3. Detached and deleted the existing audio track
  4. Recorded a replacement voiceover track using a different theme for the movie while watching the trailer (again and again)
  5. Laid in the new voiceover track from iTunes in the video clip
  6. Laid in a jazzy audio track to play as background music. 
    • This is actually a fellow camp counselor and friend of mine Paul Tynan
  7. Fine tuned the audio tracks with the video
  8. 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.

Day 1: A Twister of a Daily Create Challenge

Thursday, July 12th, 2012

I could not be more excited then to see all 36 drawings of tornados for the first day of the Seven Day Daily Create Challenge (and I realize my tweets and blog posts may be bordering on annoying in frequency, but hey, go take it up with my Drill Sergeants).

I hope to see y’all (and more for today’s challenge: a photo of an outdoor scene without any human artifacts). Remember as you go, that te challenge is at the end to weave all seven into some sort of narrative.

Everyone who completed the day 1 gets an “A” (that stands for teh Awesome).

Among the many colorful swirls for tornado drawings, some favorites for interpreting the assignment include (and folks, embedding is easier if y’all make ‘em creative commons):

TexasTornado

A face trace of one of the members of the Texas Tornados

Fiery Tornado

Chanda’s swirls are neon, and she used a free web-based app Flamepainter) we had recommended (and I forgot about)


cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by Dare to dream7
Coming to us from our collegaue in Ghana, a storm force is ds106– it is a ds106ado!


cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by Sharon Drummond
It has all the symbols, but Shannon’s use of the brushes in Paper53 are superb. I’m studying the style…


cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by Michael Branson Smith
Michael Branson Smith brings his own twist of whacky fun by bringing the tornado full of cats to the ballpark.

Tornado

The starkness of this drawing is lovely, done with pencil on a Post-It note!

Tornado Monster

This is just fun- all eyeballs on or in the storm


cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by dr.coop
Hurricane, tornado, they are all storms and Coop makes a groovy drinkable version.


cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by audreywatters
I could not be more excited than to see Audrey Watters playing along, here her tornado rips up her Udacity class notes.

Tornado in My Head

Inside Cris’s brain!


cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by mindofamasri
UMW student Mohamed casts a tornado out on the pyramids of Eqypt!


cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by ghbrett
Also I am excited to see my friend George Greet drawing!

Tornado

I just adore the textures and sense of intrigue that comes out of this drawing.

Saddle up for Day 2!

Name that 80s movie #5

Thursday, July 12th, 2012

The Noun Project Credits:
Football designed by Saman Bemel-Benrud
Rocket designed by John O’Shea
Tree designed by Saman Bemel-Benrud
Palace designed by Okan Benn

Magic MacGuffin Mystery Show

Thursday, July 12th, 2012

Today, in lieu of a weekly campfire, I’ll be hosting a live radio panel/call-in show to discuss some of the mysterious happenings at Camp Magic MacGuffin. I felt it was time to bring together a number of people to discuss exactly what’s going on at camp. There have been a number of speculations, some alarming, some downright horrifying: 

I’ve managed to contact a number of these people to discuss all of this AND MORE!!! 

Our Panel: 

  • Alan Levine, Camp Magic MacGuffin Co-Director
  • Slide Guy!, Internet Celebrity
  • Zazzy, Camp Magic MacGuffin Counselor
  • Uncle Hector, Unauthorized Magic MacGuffin Camper
  • ????

You can tune-in on DS106 Radio at 3:30PM EST today for the show. If you’d like to ask questions of our panel, simply login to the DS106 TeamSpeak server. We’ll be using this to pull the voices of all of our participants together. 

If you’re listening to the show this afternoon and have questions but can’t get on TeamSpeak, feel free to tweet them to @mburtis. I’ll be sure to monitor them. 

If you can’t attend, feel free to share any questions you have in the comments below. I’ll be sure to fit them in. 

And, I will be archiving the show and posting it here afterwards. 

Stay tuned and stay safe, campers!! 

Name that 80s movie #4

Thursday, July 12th, 2012

Experimenting a bit with The Noun Project and Illustrator before today’s Breakfast Club edition of ds106, and figured I would throw out another 80s movie 4 icon challenge because I can!

The Noun Project Credits:
Television by The Noun Project
VHS Tape by Ted Mitchner
Lips by Davide Eucalipto
Gun by Simon Child

Twin Peaks – fanedit

Thursday, July 12th, 2012

Bobby Briggs

Watching the four plus hour Northwest Passage fanedit of Twin Peaks brought back a bunch of memories. The video claims to be distillation of the mystery surrounding Laura Palmer’s murder. I suppose it works on that level but frankly, I was never much interested in the plot line of David Lynch’s television masterpiece.

I watched it week after week for two years because it was the weirdest and most beautiful thing I’d ever seen on the tube.

I suppose the Northwest Passage fanedit provides a convenient way to either dive-in to or brush up on Twin Peaks. And it also contains several moments that can be turned into animated GIFs for those of us still trying to hone the skills.