? And I guess that’s why they call it the contest nobody could win
Time on my hands could be time spent with you
Laughing like children, living like lovers
Rolling like thunder under the covers
And I guess that’s why they call it the contest nobody could win ?

Elton “Melody” John

It’s time to play, ‘Guess That Movie!’ I chose to do the assignment The Contest Nobody Could Win (Video-Mashup Edition) for my next mashup because it sounded like a lot of fun! Details for this assignment are as follows:

“Create a mashup of 6 video clips (either TV or Movie) no longer than 2 seconds each. See if anyone can guess your favorite films!”

I chose 6 different 80’s movies for this assignment after perusing an extensive list. These aren’t necessarily my favorite movies, but they are ones I’ve at least seen or seen parts of, and are ones that I like. I tried to pick out titles that are neither super popular (i.e., Back to the Future), nor super obscure, because I wanted it to be challenging but not impossible. I came up with a list of about 10 movie options, then narrowed it down to 6 based on some running themes of transportation.

Next, I downloaded a clip from each movie and scrubbed through them in After Effects for the scene I wanted. Each scene could only be 2 seconds long, so I had to choose carefully. I selectively cut out 2 seconds from each clip based on my theme, and stitched those clips together. Finally, I added end credits and an answers frame at the end for anyone who failed to Guess That Movie!

But wait, something is missing….ah! An intro would be nice here! I decided to add an intro to my game, and I did this by adding some white shapes to the beginning of my video so that I had a background image that looked like film strip. Next, I added the text “Guess That Movie” (each word on a separate layer) and then “80’s,” and thought up ways to animate my text. I decided that I would have “80’s” come in from the right and bump “That,” forcing “That” to scoot over to the left to make room for the new word.

To achieve my desired effect, I placed a mask over “80’s” and set up keyframes to move both the mask and the 80’s text layer. I also added a black rectangle shape to move with those layers so that “80’s” didn’t just appear out of nowhere. Once “80’s” was in place, I made the rectangle disappear by changing the scale and opacity keyframes. It was a little tricky to get “80’s” to move, stop, and then keep moving. This movement will look jerky unless you go to keyframe interpolation in the nav menu. I used ‘hold’ and ‘linear’ for my keyframes to get a smooth movement.

I then added a text animation to “Guess,” “That” and “Movie,” called text wiggle, and adjusted the settings to get the movement that I wanted. Finally, I added an upbeat 80’s tune from Freesound.org. The music was a little longer than my animation, so I cut out some of the middle and placed the beginning and end together rather than stretching out my animation (I didn’t want a longer intro). You can tell where the cut is, but it’s hopefully not too noticeable.

Without further ado, I bet you can’t Guess That Movie:

For my first assignment this week I’ve done this one for 4 stars. The assignment is as follows:

Create a mashup of 6 video clips (either TV or Movie) no longer than 2 seconds each. See if anyone can guess your favorite films!

Please watch the above video to see the clips and guess what TV shows they are in the comments below! You can pause the video before the answers are given at the end, to see if you were right!

I absolutely love the assignments like this which involve commenters guessing the story you’re trying to tell, as it gives the assignments more of an interactive nature. The story of this video however is simple, as it contains short clips (2 seconds each) from 6 of my favorite TV shows! The challenge here was picking out 6 favorites (I love a lot of TV) and then choosing only 6 seconds of them from available YouTube clips. I tried to chose scenes that were not necessarily iconic or well-known to make it more difficult and yet, if you like the show involved and you see the clip, you should be able to recognize it easily. Anyway, I supposed already one or two of the shows aren’t as well-known so I’m not sure if many people will be able to guess them all! Surely you all can at least guess a few of them?

To to this assignment, I used the 4K video downloader to download clips of the scenes I wanted, then I used Adobe Premiere Elements 15 to edit the clips down to the 2 seconds from each and create the mashup of all the clips. I added background music, which is Wrong by VYEN from YouTube’s copyright free music section. Additionally I added a title and some text at the end of the video that reveals the answers to what TV shows are shown.

Did you get any of them right in your guesses?