I used Photo Booth to do all of the filters on my weekly letter home. Then I uploaded each segment to iMovie. I introduced two of my daily creates and added some music (Black Horse & Cherry Tree by KT Tunstall) into the letter home.
I loved Video Week especially week 2. It really is hard work but also the time to get creative. It’s rewarding to see your finished product and feel proud that this is something you accomplished in such a short period of time. After this week I know I will explore editing and video much more… even after this class is over.
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.
Some people are tech savvy and some aren’t. My mother is always curious about how technology works and is constantly being updated on a daily basis. Recently through DS106 we learned how to download YouTube videos straight into the computer. This is something that will really come in handy for this class and for the future, whether it be pure entertainment or work/school related.
I told my mom about this new discovery and she suddenly became very interested! I decided to make a tutorial on how to show my mom on how to download a YouTube video.
Enjoy maybe you will learn something new too!
I used Quick Time to film my desktop then used Sound Cloud to add in audio. The first 4-5 seconds of me introducing the tutorial was filmed through Photo Booth (an application that comes with Mac Computers).
I then downloaded my audio from Sound Cloud and uploaded it into my Itunes. The final step was to upload everything into iMovie and make layers of sound and video. Luckily, for this tutorial I only had one layer of audio so it was fairly simple.
This is week 2 of video analysis in ds106. Taking a look at the video series Everything is a Remix by Kirby Ferguson, we see that the same or similar ideas are repeated over and over, through decades and eras in movies. This concept is reinforced by last weeks study of reading movies and specifically genres or TV Tropes.
I never really thought about it before but many (if not all) movie story lines are regenerate, reinvented, reinvigorated, and reused many times over sometimes from lesser known movies like those listed here on Cracked.com. This makes me wonder when the last time there was a completely “original” concept introduced into our movie collections. And quite frankly, I do not know the answer. I’m not a big movie buff, and admittedly, I’ve seen the beginning or parts of many movies, but have fallen asleep or lost interest before viewing the entire film. However, I was excited to find myself identifying a “remix” scene Friday night while watching an old movie (old to me anyway!)
Friday was Friday the 13th. I thought it would be fun to watch the original, classic Friday the 13th movie that night. As the movie played there was one scene that caught my attention as familiar.
I recognized this scene from Dirty Dancing. Well, actually Friday the 13th came out first in 1980. Dirty Dancing debuted in 1987. But I saw Dirty Dancing before seeing Friday the 13th, so that’s my point of reference.
So in answer to the question posed to us this week:
Is everything a remix? I would have to say…Yes! I give the TV Tropes as evidence that all cinema falls into one or more of these categories, therefore connecting it to the others in each group or making a remix of ones that came before it.
None of those things takes into account the humanness of students or others in a school.
I think it’s human nature to find the flaws and negatives in any situation. However, I’m always grateful for the reminder of how wonderful my school and my colleagues are.
I’ve also been reading a couple of books that have reinforced this: A Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs and Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. Jacobs spends time focusing on how thankful he is for even the smallest things and finds it to be quite a joyful experience. Hillenbrand’s book is about a POW in Japan during WWII and his strength and faith through trauma and chaos were powerful reminders of all I have. Both books are fabulous.
I have to say that when I saw today’s Daily Create I wasn’t thrilled.
Make an annoying 30 second pre-recorded telemarketing call.
It didn’t sound like something fun to do so I put it off for most of the day. Without Cogdog’s Seven Day Challenge for the Daily Creates, I may well have skipped this. However, since had already completed the first few challenges I figured that I should continue…
I know that editing is everything and that I went on for way too long but so do the telemarketers! I ended up enjoying this process much more than I thought that I would. Thanks CogDog for the challenge.
How I Did It
I wondered if anyone had created a real script for telemarketers to use. Indeed, top-telemarketing-tips.com existed. As I have experienced, they recommended using the callee’s name repeatedly, building a personal connection and, of course, explaining why they are so awesome.
Armed with this knowledge it took just a few minutes to write an annoying telemarketing script on my iPad. I thought that I wuold try out one of the teleprompter apps I had downloaded a while back but didn’t like them at all. I found another free one (Listec Promptware Plus) that allowed me to easily see my script while recording.
I did my recording in Audacity and added a fog horn from iLife.
I uploaded my final version to Soundcloud and created a quick image using Microsoft Word clip art and cruise ship from Bret Arnett’s photostream to accompany it.
Within minutes my Soundcloud was spammed with a comment – kind of funny given the topic of telemarketing and unsolicited information!!
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. :-)
This is my letter home for week 7… but in video form.
This week consisted of a lot of brainstorming for my video productions. I am still uncomfortable with being on camera, but decided to make a video anyway. (practice makes perfect? lol)
I’m actually only using the video feature on my digital camera, so I’m not entirely happy with the quality. But ya gotta work with what you have I guess…..
When I saw that todayâs Daily Create was to share an annoying telemarking call, I realized that I had something that it might make sense to share. Itâs not really annoying, per say, but it is relevant to the activities this summer. I had actually forgotten about it until the prompt sparked my memory today!!
Looking back, I guess it was a kind of strange way to get recruitedâŠbut, hey, look at all the great things that have come out of it!
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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.....
