Tina Sounds



Yesterday my friend Tina told me she liked the way I gave Jim some music to dance to. I though I’d show her, and anyone else how to play a sound when a gif (or anything else) is clicked.

I made a quick gif of a scene from Tina’s work that shows what a committed and brave actor she is, I believe she does all her own stunts.
tina_stairs

click the image to hear the soundtrack.

Video grabbed from ? Talky Tina — Living Doll — Two Minute Twilight Zone Project — Season 5, Episode 6 – YouTube just a screen capture using ScreenFlow.
A few frames extracted with MPEG Steamclip, pullined into fireworks and exported as a gif.

I then searched Freesound for a sound of someone falling down the stairs that was cc licensed: Freesound.org – “Falling Down Wooden Stairs.wav” by Benboncan.
In Safari I viewed the source of the page, searched for .mp3 to find the link to the low quality preview:
www.freesound.org/data/previews/80/80916_634166-lq.mp3 (I took the http:// off here as wordpress embeds if I do not)

I knew that Freeview provides previews in mp3 and ogg so that we can play then with html5 and do not need any plugins (Firefox on mac needs ogg other browsers handle the mp3, this is a moving target). the ogg files have the same url but with the .ogg extension.

I started this blog post, switching to the Text (html) view in the editor and put in an audio tag:


	<audio id="tinastairs" preload loop>
	  <source src="http://www.freesound.org/data/previews/80/80916_634166-lq.ogg" type="audio/ogg">
	  <source src="http://www.freesound.org/data/previews/80/80916_634166-lq.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
	  Your browser does not support the audio tag.
	</audio>

If you are going to do this more than once on a page you need to give the audio a unique id here I used tinastairs.

You could copy the block of code above, replacing the id and the urls.
Update: The way wp adds paragraphs, it is best to take out all the line breaks when you use this.

This addes the audio to the post, it is preloaded, and will loop when played, but it does not show on the page (I’ve left out the controls parameter).

I then added the gif in the normal way. In the text view this gives me:

<img src="http://johnjohnston.info/106/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/tina_stairs.gif" alt="tina_stairs" width="420" height="260" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-854" />

I added a snippet of JavaScript to play the sound when the gif is clicked:
onclick="a=document.getElementById('tinastairs');if(a.paused){a.play()}else{a.pause();}"
As a parameter of the image tag like this:
<img onclick="a=document.getElementById('tinastairs');if(a.paused){a.play()}else{a.pause();}" src="http://johnjohnston.info/106/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/tina_stairs.gif" alt="tina_stairs" width="420" height="260" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-854" />
You can see I use the id of the audio tag, again you could copy this code and use a different ID.

Hopefully Tina will love this?

tinaeyes

I used the same process here, with different IDs but exported mp3 and ogg from Audacity, after recoding the sound from youtube.

Red Alert, on Maple Street

"Red Alert" animated GIF, by aforgrave, from "The Monsters are Due On Maple Street"

“Red Alert” animated GIF, by aforgrave, from “The Monsters are Due On Maple Street”

“The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs, and explosions, and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy. And a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own, for the children, and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is…that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone.”

If there was ever an episode of The Twilight Zone that emphasized the fear of “the other” and the Cold War, The Monsters are Due On Maple Street would be it. Had they filmed this in colour, those lamp posts could have pulsed with Red light, and it couldn’t have made the point any clearer.

The hysteria in the closing moments is masterfully edited, and those wonky camera angles are so wonderfully characteristic of their time. I almost find the addition of the aliens on the hill at the end to be an anti-climax, and unnecessary. Had the episode simply wrapped with Serling’s closing commentary, it would have been even more real — no alien intervention required to push mankind off the edge.

Check out Brian Short‘s (@heystorytellers) masterful mashup edit of video from “Monsters are Due on Maple Street” and Kanye’s tune “Monster.” I love the way he cuts the edits to match the beat. One would almost think this episode had been shot and cut to suit the tune. So well done!

Kanye Is Due on Maple Street from Brian Short on Vimeo.

Cool Resources for The Monsters are Due on Maple Street

Some quick web searches also turned up gems like PDFs of the script, including one from a textbook that I’m sure I’ve come across over the years.

What a classic tale.

Missing Glasses

This assignment was to create an Animated GIF associated with the Twilight Zone. I decided that what better way to torture Mr. Bemis if he never did find his glasses. This is precisely what this is a GIF of!I know I put them somewhere....

Missing Glasses

This assignment was to create an Animated GIF associated with the Twilight Zone. I decided that what better way to torture Mr. Bemis if he never did find his glasses. This is precisely what this is a GIF of!I know I put them somewhere....

It’s A Good Life: Trading Cards

Brian Bennett beat me to the punch this evening by posting a ds106zone The Twilight Zone trading card of Mr. Hollis from the episode “It’s a Good Life.”  While I had started working on GIFs from the episode a couple weeks back (originally thinking of doing a multi-panel GIF, either synchronized or sequenced), it was after I had initially posted my original static trading cards (and then GIFfed the Katatmit) that I decided to put the episode into Trading Cards, and completed my first two, that of Mr. & Mrs. Freemont, and the Mr. Hollis Jack-in-the-Box shadow.

This evening when Brian posted his Mr. Hollis head trading Card, I decided it was a good opportunity to complete a couple more and add mine to complement his.

Here, then, are four animated Character Trading Cards from the Season 3, Episode 8 entry, “It’s a Good Life.”   I have posted static jpeg versions to the Flickr group for inclusion in the Gallery.  (Animated GIFs can get easily borked when posted to Flickr.)

"Anthony" animated GIF Trading Card by aforgrave

“Anthony” animated GIF Trading Card by aforgrave

"Mr. & Mrs. Freemont" animated GIF Trading Card by aforgrave

“Mr. & Mrs. Freemont” animated GIF by aforgrave

"Mr. Hollis Jack-in-the-Box" animated GIF Trading Card by aforgrave

“Mr. Hollis Shadow Jack” animated GIF by aforgrave

 

"Mrs. Hollis" animated GIF by aforgrave

“Mrs. Hollis” animated GIF by aforgrave

It’s A Good Life: Trading Cards

Brian Bennett beat me to the punch this evening by posting a ds106zone The Twilight Zone trading card of Mr. Hollis from the episode “It’s a Good Life.”  While I had started working on GIFs from the episode a couple weeks back (originally thinking of doing a multi-panel GIF, either synchronized or sequenced), it was after I had initially posted my original static trading cards (and then GIFfed the Katatmit) that I decided to put the episode into Trading Cards, and completed my first two, that of Mr. & Mrs. Freemont, and the Mr. Hollis Jack-in-the-Box shadow.

This evening when Brian posted his Mr. Hollis head trading Card, I decided it was a good opportunity to complete a couple more and add mine to complement his.

Here, then, are four animated Character Trading Cards from the Season 3, Episode 8 entry, “It’s a Good Life.”   I have posted static jpeg versions to the Flickr group for inclusion in the Gallery.  (Animated GIFs can get easily borked when posted to Flickr.)

"Anthony" animated GIF Trading Card by aforgrave

“Anthony” animated GIF Trading Card by aforgrave

"Mr. & Mrs. Freemont" animated GIF Trading Card by aforgrave

“Mr. & Mrs. Freemont” animated GIF by aforgrave

"Mr. Hollis Jack-in-the-Box" animated GIF Trading Card by aforgrave

“Mr. Hollis Shadow Jack” animated GIF by aforgrave

 

"Mrs. Hollis" animated GIF by aforgrave

“Mrs. Hollis” animated GIF by aforgrave

Go Daddy…. Wheeeeeeee

DaddyDJSlide_GIF_Short

Grandson and son-in-law having fun last summer at the park.

Our only required DS106 assignment this week was to create an animated GIF from a Twilight Zone episode.  Me bad… I didn’t use a Twilight Zone clip…  But according to Talky Tina, who gave us the assignment, my GIF fulfills most of the other requirements. It’s B&W.  And it’s capturing a really nice childhood moment.

“But that’s okay, because a black-and-white sequence makes for a smaller GIF anyway! Can you help me relive my childhood (and perhaps your childhood, or that of your parents?) with some nice, friendly b&w animated GIFs From The Twilight Zone and Beyond?  Try to capture all of the really nice childhood moments! You know the really, really best and funnest parts!

I’ve never created a GIF before, so this was a bit of an adventure.  I had to first figure out what these things were all about.  Luckily my daughter was over for family Sunday dinner tonight and she pointed me to some fun examples at James Vander Memes.  It turned out after doing some research on the web and viewing a few tutorials on YouTube that my Mac versions of Adobe Premiere Elements 11 and Photoshop Elements 11 software would work.

The clip I’m using was taken from a video of my grandson and son-in-law called “Playtime With Daddy” that I created and posted to YouTube at the beginning of the year.  At the time I was acquainting myself with new video editing software and was having fun trying out new effects like changing the speed of the video and adding in an old news reel effect.

I had some trouble figuring out which format to publish the video clip so that it would turn into sequenced images. Publish+Share => Computer => Image (use for exporting still image) => open the advanced menu and choose “export as sequence” under the video heading, then save.  My next glitch showed up as I was moving each of the still images into a single Photoshop file.  For some reason my Photoshop Elements wasn’t letting me easily copy and paste the layers between files like I had done with earlier versions.  I found a work around. Again, after some trial and error, when saving it to the web as a GIF I needed to check the sequence box.  Then it would only play in reverse?  What the ….??? After trying, without success, to manually reorder the layers I finally found a checkbox that said reverse on it, and I was on my way. Only to be stymied one last time when I previewed my blog entry and the original Flickr link didn’t work correctly.  I ended up just inserting my own media.  I’ll update my post if I get it working correctly.

I enjoyed this assignment and am looking forward to learning more about what others have done with a GIF.  I wonder how I’ll be using this form of story telling in the future?

Daddy Slides for DJ

Go Daddy…. Wheeeeeeee

DaddyDJSlide_GIF_Short

Grandson and son-in-law having fun last summer at the park.

Our only required DS106 assignment this week was to create an animated GIF from a Twilight Zone episode.  Me bad… I didn’t use a Twilight Zone clip…  But according to Talky Tina, who gave us the assignment, my GIF fulfills most of the other requirements. It’s B&W.  And it’s capturing a really nice childhood moment.

“But that’s okay, because a black-and-white sequence makes for a smaller GIF anyway! Can you help me relive my childhood (and perhaps your childhood, or that of your parents?) with some nice, friendly b&w animated GIFs From The Twilight Zone and Beyond?  Try to capture all of the really nice childhood moments! You know the really, really best and funnest parts!

I’ve never created a GIF before, so this was a bit of an adventure.  I had to first figure out what these things were all about.  Luckily my daughter was over for family Sunday dinner tonight and she pointed me to some fun examples at James Vander Memes.  It turned out after doing some research on the web and viewing a few tutorials on YouTube that my Mac versions of Adobe Premiere Elements 11 and Photoshop Elements 11 software would work.

The clip I’m using was taken from a video of my grandson and son-in-law called “Playtime With Daddy” that I created and posted to YouTube at the beginning of the year.  At the time I was acquainting myself with new video editing software and was having fun trying out new effects like changing the speed of the video and adding in an old news reel effect.

I had some trouble figuring out which format to publish the video clip so that it would turn into sequenced images. Publish+Share => Computer => Image (use for exporting still image) => open the advanced menu and choose “export as sequence” under the video heading, then save.  My next glitch showed up as I was moving each of the still images into a single Photoshop file.  For some reason my Photoshop Elements wasn’t letting me easily copy and paste the layers between files like I had done with earlier versions.  I found a work around. Again, after some trial and error, when saving it to the web as a GIF I needed to check the sequence box.  Then it would only play in reverse?  What the ….??? After trying, without success, to manually reorder the layers I finally found a checkbox that said reverse on it, and I was on my way. Only to be stymied one last time when I previewed my blog entry and the original Flickr link didn’t work correctly.  I ended up just inserting my own media.  I’ll update my post if I get it working correctly.

I enjoyed this assignment and am looking forward to learning more about what others have done with a GIF.  I wonder how I’ll be using this form of story telling in the future?

Daddy Slides for DJ

Pressing the Panic Button

twilight-zone-panic-button

It’s the end of the school year, end of term work is piling up on your desk and inbox,  it makes more sense to count the remainder of the instructional time you have with students in hours rather than days, and you feel like if a panic button magically appeared on your desk, you’d smash it without a moment of hesitation. That’s sort of where I am right now. I’ve been failing miserably in keeping up with the DS106 assignments for this past week (I managed a lowly 2 animated GIFS), the end of year PD for technology is falling apart, and I’m chasing the loose ends of all the conferences I’m attending his summer like a neophyte teacher with eyes wide.

That’s not to say I’m not enjoying the experience! But after watching the pilot episode of the Twilight Zone, I’m desperately seeking a panic button for a few hours of escape. Titled under the misnomer of “Where is Everybody?“, the fledgling episode of Rod Serling’s seminal program about the paranormal explores the depths of human sanity with the deprivation of all contact with other beings (sorry, no spoiler alerts for a 60+ year old television program). The premise starts simply enough; a man with no recollection of who he is, or where he came from, awakens to find the world completely devoid of other beings. Tea kettles are left boiling on stoves, jukeboxes playing, and automated recordings are all that’s to be heard when dialing the operator. As the main character attempts to pass off his uncanny solitude with jokes and monologues delivered to himself in the mirror, it becomes painfully obvious that someone, or something is watching his every move. The feeling of being under careful watch, something that all teachers in Michigan can most likely identify with these days, becomes apparent, and before long, our protaganist is reduced to a sobbing heap of a man, finding a crosswalk signal, and desperately mashing the button as though it were some sort of “panic button” capable of ending his torment. It’s a fantastic story, and worth watching if you haven’t experienced the joys of the Twilight Zone. Provided Hulu is still allowing embedded video, you can watch it below.

I’m glad that I’ve jumped into this abbreviated term of DS106. It’s a great release for the stress that builds up at the end of the school year (my own personal “panic button” if you will), and it’s a great chance to explore and mine a lot of really great vintage media from the Twilight Zone; the theme of DS106 this go around is the DS106 Zone, a riff on black and white series of yesteryear. If you haven’t ever watched the original Twilight Zone episodes, or if it’s just been a nice long time since you caught them on TV, slide over to Hulu and watch a few episodes! I had anticipated watching a few minutes in order to produce the animated GIF at the top of this article for the Twilight Zone animated GIF assignment, but I ended up watching nearly an hour of terrific classic sci-fi and paranormal story telling, a great release for any teacher at the end of the school year, when some of the stress and duties put upon us feels as though some omnipotent being is orchestrating the very demise of our sanity.

DUBSTEP!!!!!!!!!! AHHHH, MY EARS!!!

I found the episode, “The Invaders,” of the Twilight Zone to be freakin hilarious!

I miss my childhood when Dubstep didn’t exist.

I used MPEG Streamclip to trim my scene, exported it as images, imported in GIMP as layers, scaled images, and saved as .GIF. BAM!