For this Video Assignment (http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/how-to-tutorial/) we had to make a How-to video. For this assignment I decided to do make-up application. The reason I chose make-up is because I love make-up, I did ballet for 20 years, so it was something I always ended up being around. I chose to do a simple every-day application. I first tell the user to prime the face with a foundation primer. After that you take the foundation and cover the face blending up into the hair line and down through the jaw bone area. After that you take a nude eyeshadow and cover your eyelid from your lash line to your crease. After that you apply mascara. Once that is complete you apply the nude lipstick and you are ready to go!
This Video Assignment (http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/lip-synch-your-favorite-song/) was by far my absolute favorite assignment ever. For the assignment we had to lip sing a song. I decided to get out of my comfort zone (signing Adele or Brittney Spears) to rapping Nikki Minaj’s verse in Bottom’s Up. I must have watched some of her music video’s 100 times so I could try to capture her personality. I had so much fun rapping, good thing I knew the lyrics (it’s me bestfriends favorite song) . For this video I had my little brother record me. I think for the most part I did a good job lip syncing. :)
Looking at the video I don’t even recognize myself, it’s like a complete alter ego.
After completing the tasks mentioned, I then changed the video to black and white. The hardest part for me was figuring out how to slow down and fast forward the clips. They were both options under “Clip” in iMovie, but for some reason, it wasn’t allowing me to actually make the selection about how much I wanted to slow down or fast forward. I’m not even sure how I figured it out! I tooled around for a while and moved the files in the different editors and finally I was able to make the selection. This made the video look dated. I fast forwarded a lot of the clips, but I slowed down the ones with text and certain parts that I thought (or remember) being in slow motion in the movie. also was able to add a video effect to my movie; I chose “Aged film.”
For the background music, I looked at the list of Sound Resources from Week 5 at Magic Macguffin. I chose to get my clip from Free Music Archive. I wanted the song to have an “Old-Timey” feel, so that is the genre I searched on the website. I found “Cutie” by Eubie Blake and His Orchestra after trying to match lots of different songs with the trailer. It seemed to work very well and I used it in the final product! I downloaded the song to iTunes and added it to my project in iMovie.
I thought this movie was a very unpredictable choice for this assignment (maybe not coming from me though!).
For this particular Video Assignment (http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/reenact-a-viral-video/) We had to reenact a video on YouTube that has gone viral(1mil + views). So I decided to do my little brother and daughter’s favorite video, “Charlie bit me.” Ever since that video became popular, it has been a thing for them to act out for everybody that enters our house, they even do it for people at the nail salon. To do this video I had my little brother and daughter watch the video about 3 times to try to master the British accent (since my grandmother wasn’t answering her phone.) and they studied it. It took about 2 tries but they finally got all of the giggles out and did it.
One of the Video Assignments for this week (http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/5-seconds-of-fame/) was to make a 5 second long video, preferably a funny one. This was the first video assignment that I did. So I decided to get a video of my daughter slaying the dragon (my little brother). You would be amazed at the eye-hand coordination that this toddler posses. This video cracks me up every time I watch it. Since the video had to get done, we had it done in the presence of a family friend… My niece myself and I went to the basement, as my daughter helped herself to my little brother’s sword and began to slay the dragon (we love the old black and white swash-buckling movies), and slay she did. Serves him right, for telling her that aliens are in her closet. I have never seen him move that fast in his life, even during a soccer game.
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!
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.
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.....
