This week’s assignment from the Assignment Bank was to create a video of someone signing (finger spelling) a word for others to guess. I thought it would be interesting to see if anyone could figure out the word I chose to spell.
To create this video, I used an iPhone 6 to record the video and edited it with iMovie. I added a title slide at the beginning and end of the video, cropped out some shakey parts and added the Simple jingle from iMovie’s jingle database. Finally, I gave it a title, Guess the Word, and uploaded it to YouTube.
The most difficult part of the project was trying to upload the video to YouTube from iMovie. Over the course of four hours and countless attempts, I still did not get it to work. I guess I’m too stubborn for my own good. Finally, I decided to save the project as a file and initiate the upload from the YouTube website. It worked the first time and only took seconds to upload.
For this video assignment the task was to take a video of yourself or someone else and finger spell a word or a phrase in Sign Language alphabet and let others guess what you have spelled.  I chose this assignment for a couple of different reasons.  The first being that this next year I will have a student in my class with significant hearing loss.  At this point, she still has some hearing, and for the most part will be able to access typical day to day instruction with the help of hearing aids and a speaker located next to her (I will be wearing a microphone around my neck).  However she will, most likely, eventually lose her hearing all together.  She is currently learning sign language, and has taught some of her peers bits and pieces  of what she has learned, but I think about her struggles often.
The second reason I chose this assignment is that, at one point in my life, I was fluent in ASL. Â I took ASL courses that were offered at a local community college throughout high school. Â Sadly, since then, I have not used it at all. In this case the saying “use it or lose it” is absolutely true. Â I don’t remember much at all of what I learned in those courses, and even needed to refresh my memory on the alphabet to make sure I was spelling this word correctly!
The technical aspects of this assignment were pretty simple and straightforward.  I used my phone  to film myself signing the word I chose (it took several takes to get it without messing up and without toddler chatter in the background).  I then edited a few seconds from the beginning and end of the video on my phone, and then I uploaded the video to youtube.  I hope you can “read” my word!
I have always wanted to learn sign language. At one point in life I was even trying to teach myself. The only sign I’ve managed to remember is the sign for bullish**… go figure haha. When I came across this video assignment I automatically knew I would give it a shot. The assignment required that I take a video signing a word or phrase and have my audience guess what I spelled out. So take a wild guess!
Hints:Â 9 Letter Word/ The instrumental in the back round has the word in it’s title…
Hopefully you guess before making it to the credits haha DEAD GIVEAWAY.
Learn how I made this video by watching the tutorial.
I completed the four and a half star assignment Signing Words.
Using my iPhone I filmed my hand using american sign language to spell out some words. I chose to spell out the name of my character.
Admittedly, the only language I’ve expressed using a single hand has been impolite. A single gesture not hard to learn at all used few and far between. Surprisingly, it wasn’t hard to pick up on other hand gestures needed for this assignment. Stringing them together in a smooth fashion was somewhat difficult. So before shooting the video, I practiced signing a couple of times. The end result is seen above.
The only trouble I had was steadying my phone at an angle which would make the shot clear and with enough light. I placed my phone between two books looking at the ground underneath a lamp. The shadow to the left of my hand is derived from the surface on which my books and phone rested. With the tools I had at my disposal, ridding the shot of that shadow was impossible. It doesn’t obstruct the view of my hand however. It just looks misplaced.
In the future, I’d try to figure out how to rid my shot of that pesky shadow.
For this assignment, you have to use sign language to spell out a word or words. I wanted to connect this to my character, Luke Nelson, so I spelled out his name! I had never done sign language before, so it was actually quite difficult for me, even when I was looking at a sheet of the form. Not much to be said about the process, besides looking up how to do them, and creating short title sheets in Premiere Pro.
The third assignment I chose to do was called Signing Words worth four and half stars. The assignment directions say to pick a word and take a video of yourself signing it. I had fun creating this assignment because I got to relearn the sign language alphabet, which I had forgotten.My friend knows how to sign and I’ve always been interested in learning how to sign. This was a good baby step for me at learning how to sign, and how to learn the fluid motions of your hands have to be. I can say right now some of the transitions between the letters I sign in the video are ruff but I did my best. Sign language is a very interesting and different language, one I would recommend people try to learn, if not complex sign then basic sign. Can you guess the word I signed?
Signing Language:Â This assignment requires you to take a video of yourself or someone else and finger spell a word or a phrase in Sign Language alphabet and let others guess what you have spelled. Make sure you do a word that is bigger then 5 letters so you can learn some of the letters. (4.5 stars).
Once I saw this assignment, I thought it sounded so interesting and nothing like I have done before! I immediately chose one of my favorite things and decided to sign it.
For this assignment, I used the Sign Language Alphabet:
I used Photo Booth, which is on my laptop already, and decided to record myself signing a word (That you have to guess!!). It did take me a couple tries, but I got it in no time! I inserted my video into iMovie, and added a title page and a credits page. I added a song for the background, which I think was perfect for this video story. I used Coldplay’s Paradise off YouTube. I used Fltvo.com to convert this song to make it easier to add to iMovie! It’s very easy to use.
I also decided to reverse the screen or “Flip” as iMovie calls it. I wanted to make sure the viewers got the right hand sign because I know video and pictures can reverse the ways are seen, depending on the angle of the camera. I found this by clicking “Adjust” and then, the little Video reel on the right. Then, under “Video Effect”, I chose Flipped.
I really liked doing this assignment. I am not much on recording myself, I always feel that I will mess up. But, I do have relatives that were deaf and this was a way of communicating. I think its such a cool thing that we can communicate by signs and its universal to everyone in the world. I wanted to sign something simple yet very meaningful, which is what I think is sign language. It is easy to learn, I learned my word pretty fast, but it’s so meaningful to people who are disabled from hearing. I believe this is a beautiful language and sometimes not verbally talking produces wonderful things, like love. I learned from this video that I think I may want to take up a new language soon!
I found this assignment to be pretty cool, especially after participating in this years Lip Sync event (and no, it’s not the lip sync assignment!) For all that didn’t attend, the winners of the competition were the sign language group! I personally know no sign language, so I thought this would be a super fun (and educational) assignment to complete! The word I chose to sign directly related to my host character, The Headless Ballerina….so go ahead, watch my video and take a guess!
The making of this assignment was a little harder than I had expected it would be. As I said earlier, I’ve never learned any sign language! I quickly realized that my memory really isn’t the best, and I couldn’t seem to take a 1-take video without messing it up! So instead I decided to take pictures of my hands signing the letters and string them together. I think it made a better video! So I just went ahead and took pictures of each letter, uploaded them into my iMovie, strung them together in order, and added a title and ending slide!
For this next video assignment, I chose to do the “Signing Words” project worth 5 stars. The Red Reaper has been very gracious today and lent me his assistance. He messed up a little bit but I don’t think it was too bad for a first attempt!
I used the YouTube editor to edit the video clip slightly.
