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 Video Assignment (http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/this-is-my-story/) we had to tell a story or tell how our day went on flash cards. I decided to tell how my day went. I decided to write down what took place during the beginning of the day. It’s very hard for me to write the things down but I hear that it can be very therapeutic and healing. Every other Sunday my daughter’s dad is suppose to come see her, but every other visit day he seems to have a reason why he can’t, most of them being that he forgot. This morning I got up and got my daughter ready for her visit, to get a text 2 hours before he was suppose to be here saying that he forgot and has something else to do. Somethings frustrate to a point of no return, and you can’t show any emotion for them. Luckily for me my daughter doesn’t know or think that, that is her dad. It was just another Sunday to her, one that she spent with mommy on her swing set.
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.
More video assignments! This time it is a silent movie! When I was looking at this last week I was stuck on which film clip I should use for my silent movie. The last comment on the assignment page said “Get creative and choose a movie that would look most unlikely to be done from this era.” With that in mind I tried thinking of movies that were produced more recently. I started thinking of some of my favorite movies, and one of my all time favorites is “Parent Trap“, the modern one with Lindsay Lohan. I have good memories of watching it numerous times throughout childhood with my mom, and even now we watch it and can quote every line. It must have a wonderful storyline in order for there to be two versions of it. Anyways, I started looking on Youtube for different clips from the movie. I happened upon one of the prank scenes from the movie, but unfortunately it had French subtitles running throughout it. I was able to find a longer version of the clip that I wanted and I edited it down to just the prank scene using MPEG Streamclip. I thought this scene would give people laughs, and you can understand what is going on in it without the audio, perfect for the silent film!
After I trimmed the video down to the size I wanted I was able to upload it to Windows Live Movie Maker. I tried some of the different effects that were available to make the movie look older, but none were really that satisfying to me. I then tried using “The Artistifier” by uploading my edited version of “The Parent Trap” to Youtube, but that did not work. So I browsed on the internet for awhile trying to find programs that could help me “age” my movie. Then I happened upon something wonderful called “AVS Video Editor.” I downloaded it onto my computer and started editing,it even had something called “Old Movie Effect.” Within a half hour I had the perfect silent film, it looked professional! Unfortunately, when I tried to upload it onto Youtube, it said I had to buy it or else there would be a “AVS Video Editor” watermark across my whole film. I was so MAD!
But all is well that ends well. I ended up changing the color contrast on my clip in Windows Movie Maker to black and white, I then uploaded it to Youtube where I was able to put an “Old Fashioned” effect on it under enhancements. I then re-uploaded this newer version of my clip back onto Windows Movie Maker and finished editing. I muted the sounds from the real clip and added in different “silent movie” music clips from Freesound.org by Sam Fox. This was time consuming because I had to find the perfect spot to fade in and out the different music clips and sometimes I would have to repeat music clips because the scene I wanted them for was longer then the actual music clip. Finally I inserted in my title scene, visual dialogue scenes, and credit scene. Viola I was done!
Below are some pictures I took of my computer screen as I was completing my project.
Another Video Assignment for this week (http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/a-word-a-picture-a-story/) was to: Chose up to 5-10 words..just randomly pick them don’t over think it just chose these words out of the blue. Then do a Google image search on these images and chose one of the first visible photos for the word..after you have chosen your words and your images put them together in video form and tell a story..include a sentence with each image to help guide your story or try and tell it without the sentences.
The words that I chose were: Bad, Boys, Good, Girls, Date. These words were the first 5 words to pop into my head after reading the assignment. This could have because of the Carrie Underwood song “Good Girl” or that fact that my girlfriends and I had a old school slumber party and watched “Sex and The City 1&2″ this past weekend. However this is what I came up with, and it has been proven over the past few century’s.
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.
One of the video assignments for this week was to do a play by play commentary on well….anything. In the description of the assignment were the words “funny video” and I thought of a music video. Now this may seem like an unlikely parallel thought to most, but not to me. Let me explain, my best friend and I have been creating our own personal music videos since we were 15. They are quite funny, but we made a solemn oath to each other that we would never publish them for people to see. So I looked through a few of our hilarious videos, reminisced and laughed, but as I was laughing I thought of another funny video I had shot and as a bonus had neither me nor my best friend in it! It was a “dance battle” from a friend’s wedding a couple months back. I had shot the video, but I had used one of the dancer’s, Brain, camera to record it. It was on his Facebook and as I watched it I said “this is perfect!” So I sent Brian an email asking me if he could send me the video so I could edit it, and I also got permission from the other dancer Justin.
The editing on this video took me a little bit to figure out, but finally I found a simple solution to overlay my voice into the video! I edited the video down to the clip that I wanted in MPEG Streamclip. I then uploaded the clip onto Windows Live Movie Maker. From there I was able to add in my title and credit pages. I then tried to find ways to play the video and while recording my own commentary. But I could not figure out how to do that on either MPEG Streamclip or Windows Live Move Maker, so I muted the video and played it while at the same time I recorded my commentary on Audacity. I then saved the soundclip on Audacity and uploaded it to Windows Live Movie Maker. They were able to play at the same time. I uploaded the new video with he commentary onto Youtube and I was finished!
So the actual storyline is a funny dance battle between two friends at a wedding. They were just being entertaining, trying to give the bride and groom something to remember. I decided to add funny commentary to make it fit the assignment, so the assignment was fulfilled, but with something personal and memorable.
Below are some pictures of my computer screen as I was editing the video.
I decided to spend tonight relaxing in my bunk and working on a Video assignment. I chose Alanâs âReturn to the Silent Eraâ challenge. Â
I really had no idea what movie I wanted to do. Everything I thought about seemed like it would be kind of flat. And the, out of the blue, I settled on a movie that I donât even really remember liking but that is a quintessential symbol of the decade I grew up in: Teen Wolf.Â
Then, I pulled it into iMovie. I knew I wanted to make it black and white and use the iMovie âAged Filmâ effect. But, unfortunately, in my version of iMovie you canât apply to effects to a clip. So, I did the B&W effect, exported it, and then imported it back into the program. Then I was able to add the âAged Filmâ effect.
 Next, I began thinking about where I wanted to insert cue cards. The trailer soundtrack is mostly a voiceover with bits of dialogue beneath. Strangely, they seem to show each of the scenes the dialogue come from, but they are lined up together. I was able to pretty easily figure out, however, what dialogue went with what scene.Â
I wanted a realistic cue card graphic, so I did a quick Google image search and came up with this one (which is free to anyone to use!).Â
I pasted that image in wherever I thought the cue card should go, and started typing the dialogue straight from the movie. It was pretty easy to settle on a font that looked right. I did have to play with the title effects so that the text didnât fade in and out (which wouldnât make any sense on a cue card).Â
At this point, I felt like something was missing. I decided to see if I could replace some of the language in the movie dialogue with more âauthenticâ slang of the silent movie era. I found a bunch of Web sites with 1920s slang dictionaries. This PDF was probably the most thorough and useful. The translation isnât exact in some cases, but I felt like it added some kind of additional authenticity to the project.Â
Next, I worked on the music. I knew I wanted to use ragtime piano, and I found this great radio show on the Internet Archive that was available with a Creative Commons license.Â
Thereâs a point in the original trailer where Teen Wolf turns on the car radio, and the music in the clip changes. I used this point to switch to a different ragtime tune. Iâm not sure if the music works that well, but it is authentic!Â
Finally, I decided to speed up all of the video a bit. It seems to me that silent movies often have the quality of speed being off, so I thought this effect might work. I think itâs okay.
I added an opening and closing cue card, and thatâs basically it! (Note I changed the title because the term âteenagerâ didnât come into use until after 1930! Iâm not sure âYoung Adult Wolfâ is as catchy, though. :-)
For my third video assignment this week, I chose Movies by Numbers. My task is to artistically present a single number through visuals and relevant music. There is to be no narration and only the visuals and the music should tell the story.
I used Compfight to search for CC licenced images that have the word “five” among their tags. The music I chose is Take Five by Dave Brubeck. I used Animoto once again, so I added Animoto’s own videos to my story. Animoto lets you determine the beginning and/or the end of each video, so I stopped the countdown videos immediately after number 5 and I did the same with the clock.
Here is my video:
The most complicated thing in this assignment was creating a full list of images used so that I could give attribution where it is due. Here it is:
Creative Commons images used:
cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo by Tabsinthe: http://flickr.com/photos/tabsinthe/4820084267/ cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo by woodleywonderworks: http://flickr.com/photos/wwworks/3196112134/ cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo by Lst1984: http://flickr.com/photos/lst1984/493522912/ cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo by Pink Sherbet Photography: http://flickr.com/photos/pinksherbet/2001899627/ cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo by Javier Volcan: http://flickr.com/photos/jdvolcan/5456792325/
http://flickr.com/photos/neychurluvr/3369607260/
cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo by Jon Matthies: http://flickr.com/photos/jmatthies/7181077141/
cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo by Michael | Ruiz: http://flickr.com/photos/simax/3390895249/
cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo by Amrit…: http://flickr.com/photos/aksphotography/367363319/
cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo by ncracker (Boyan Syarov): http://flickr.com/photos/syarov/4534118874/
cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo by christing-O-: http://flickr.com/photos/christing/2457051794/
cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo by { pranav }: http://flickr.com/photos/neychurluvr/3369607260/
cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo by ginnerobot: http://flickr.com/photos/ginnerobot/4552277923/
cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo by flyzipper: http://flickr.com/photos/flyzipper/432622379/
cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo by Pandiyan: http://flickr.com/photos/pandiyan/75545427/
cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo by Leo Reynolds: http://flickr.com/photos/lwr/101655312/
cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo by jenny downing: http://flickr.com/photos/jenny-pics/2681981423/
cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo by bara-koukoug: http://flickr.com/photos/bara-koukoug/6941685781/
cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo by YanivG: http://flickr.com/photos/yanivg/96918791/
cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo by gonzalo_ar: http://flickr.com/photos/gonzalo_ar/644154294/
cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo by bitzi ? ion-bogdan dumitrescu: http://flickr.com/photos/bitzi/230188091/
cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo by bobbygreg: http://flickr.com/photos/bobbygreg/168206195/
cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo by marfis75: http://flickr.com/photos/marfis75/5780056202/
cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo by voyageAnatolia.blogspot.com: http://flickr.com/photos/fotogezi/3511876129/
cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo by tochis: http://flickr.com/photos/tochis/3124403063/
For my second video assignment this week, I chose to make a video compilation of some of my digital stories. At this stage in the course, it is logical that I want to look back and reflect on what I have done so far. This compilation consists of visual and design assignments and some of my Daily Creates.
I used Animoto to create the video, which is, I suppose, a shortcut. Animoto does the boring, repetitive part of the job for you and it even gives you a large choice of video styles and background music. It also lets you upload your videos to YouTube, which is what I did this time.
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.....
