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…
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!
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:
Camp is now over (see the final story. If you are craving an experience like this, head over to ds106 and see how to participate. For more on the Summer of Magic Macguffin, see.....
