For 4 1/2 to 5 stars and some change on the side if creating a swede as a group, the biddies and I were back at it! Although all three of us had SOL chasing us consistently for the last two weeks, we utilized technology more with prepping to combat some tough blows. You can see us hard at work here:
We agreed during this ‘Chop it Up’ session that our target would be Season 4 ending of episode 5 Alliances and two other major scenes in episode 6 Margin of Error. I imported these episodes into Movie Maker and trimmed these particular parts so we could practice our scenes. Melinda provided a link where we were able to print our scripts. Finally, we agreed on location shots and day in which to record.
We met at the Greyhound station, with it being so cold we opted against shooting our episode from a rooftop and instead used old green plastic toy army men for our first clip where Herc and Sydnor are planting a surveillance camera. Our next shot was of Marlo arranging what seemed to be a pick up for re-up. We chose to combine actual footage along with a reenactment of Marlo and Chris’s conversation. This was filmed by Melinda, recreated by Desa and myself in full roughneck costume. Note we shot next to a utility closet with a sign which reads ‘Sprinkler Room’, symbolic of the lye Chris and Snoop chooses to lay over their victims. Our last scene was shot within the Greyhound station to give context to Marlo’s attempt to evade the detectives who have surveillanced his previous conversation. All three of our group members ‘The Biddies’ can be seen in our production below.
Swede a Scene (4.5/5 stars) (Plus Extra Credit please? :))
Old Biddy Productions decided to get together and swede a few scenes from Season 4. We sweded scenes from Episode 5 and Episode 6. We first chatted a few times and tossed ideas around on google docs. We decided that the scenes that we did were going to be the most entertaining and challenging. Kisha extracted the video scenes from the episodes and sent them to Desa and I. Desa and I worked on finding the scripts and printing them out so that we could learn our lines. We also incorporated plastic Army men and Gizmo in gremlin form to help us. (they all willingly agreed.)
We met up early in the morning at the Fredericksburg bus station. Everyone of course stared at us as if we were insane I might add. We filmed the camera scene outside with the wall that they have there. There were so many things to be aware of such as the sunlight, shadows, the scene details, as well as wind. When you are working with Army men, they can get blown over.
Our next scene was the courtyard scene. We filmed this scene with special awareness of the background noises and the background itself. We decided to use the courtyard in the bus station with walls behind the scene and we loved the “sprinkler room” door. lol. Kisha found a jacket exactly like Marlo’s and she dressed like Chris. After this scene, we filmed in my Expedition. We wanted to use the same angles that were used in the original scene as the woman is reading Marlo’s lips. It also helped eliminate background street noise by being in the car.
The final scene involved patience. We filmed this inside the bus station so we had to wait until it was empty and quiet. The Greyhound person didn’t care that we filmed there as long as he didn’t have to be in it. Kisha borrowed a dashiki from her mother to wear while we filmed the scene in which Marlo gets arrested. Part of the scene when I talk to “Herc” which was played by Gremlin Gizmo, we had to film outside again. There was to much noise inside the station to film. We moved back inside after most of the people had left. All of the filming we did ourselves using either an iPhone or an iPad. This made is easy to mesh all of the scenes together and to add titles, credits, etc. in iMovie. Desa worked on pulling it all together and meshing our scenes with the filmed scenes. She did an excellent job. She even designed “Old Biddy Productions” label while we ate lunch. It was a long day filming but it is incredible how well the three of us work together as a team to get projects done. Old Biddies know how to knock it out of the park.  I hope you enjoy our swede. We’ve been waiting for HBO to call. Still no call yet…
Old Biddy Productions:
Kisha Mahone, Desa Stone, and Melinda Albrycht.
Here is the video swede (worth 5 stars)Â that I worked on with Meredith, David, Demi, and Carmela. We decided to work with season 3 episode 11 and we were originally going to all act it out ourselves, but then we decided to use teddy bears from the Dollar Tree. We agreed on which scenes were important to the plot of the show, and then watched them all so we could know the lines. When recording we read all the lines for the different characters using lapel microphones, and I worked on moving the teddy bears around. Meredith volunteered to work on the editing for us, so I Â actually wasn’t involved in that. This was a really fun project to work on so I hope you enjoy it!
As I told my friend, Charbel. “We did it.” What I meant was that since we worked hard on making this swede episode and finding people who can help us, the result we got was one of my friend Leanna Epps who helped us big time on the Swede assignment (4.5/5 stars). After finishing this assignment, Charbel and I were like:
Anyways, I thought earlier I would be working with other people but it turned out it wouldn’t lead that way so I had to be myself. I asked my good friend Charbel if he can help me out and he didn’t mind. I asked Leanna if she could help, and she didn’t mind. It was a lot of work and cutting scenes etc. Oh the intro is Leanna’s drawing on the board in the video. I’m pretty sure you can guess who it is. I wanted to show it because I couldn’t be thankful of Leanna helping me out. Especially Charbel for this assignment. It really meant a lot to me. Charbel and Leanna, you two deserve something:
We did Season 2 Episode 3 of The Wire. This is my favorite episode especially the yaba daba doo scene. I used the dun dun sound from Law and Order in here because I like it how it is when it shows the scene they’re doing. I wanted to do it so I did it. We did the yaba daba doo scene, Omar back scene, the scene where McNulty, Bunk, Russell, and Lester talk, the scene where Stringer and his boys are in the car with him, what they need is a union scene, and the scene where D’Angelo is in prison and something happens. We worked hard on that mostly. I was proud with what we did and accomplished. Although we even admit we’re bad actors and kept looking down so much that we love the floor, we just can’t remember the lines. We did this at the convergence center today on November 15th, 2014. Â Anyways without further ado, here is my swede for Season 2 Episode 3 of The Wire:
Hope you guys enjoyed it! Would love to hear some of your thoughts about it!
For this assignment, we had to create a swede video of a scene from The Wire. This was actually so much fun! Luckily, some of my LLC members enjoy acting, so they volunteered to be in the video! We all sat together and I showed them some of my favorite scenes from The Wire. They picked Bubbles stealing drugs, which I loved.
We decided to be creative, instead of stealing drugs, we decided to steal sweet tea (which they do among the floor). We found a good place on campus to do this scene, by the gym directly behind Alvey. Instead of the drug dealer rapping, one of them had the idea to use a song from Frozen, which was hilarious. Once we got all our prompts ready, the wire and so on, it was time to shoot.
This part was extremely funny, we all just couldn’t stop laughing. We attempted to get different angles, but it is kind of hard with just one iPhone.
Process:
After recording, I uploaded the videos into iMovie and arranged them appropriately. I did edit some of the sound to reduce the background noise.
I picked the newscast theme and did the title and credits in that format.
For the Swede a Scene assignment, i joined a group consisting of me, Meredith, Sam, David, and Demi We began working on November 6th at the ITTC. Since this was our first meeting we just discussed what we wanted to do. We obviously weren’t going to swede an entire episode so we had to choose scenes. Scenes are easy to choose, it’s just the episode from which we choose the scenes from is hard. Since we were all pretty fresh with the recent episodes, we chose Episode 11 from Season 3. I’ll discuss the scenes we chose in bits. In total we decided to swede 4 scenes.
First Scene: Omar and Bow Tie Mousone
The beginning of episode 11 is crucial. It starts off with Omar walking down an alley with laundry during a very ominous night. Then Brother Mousone approaches him from far behind with a gun. Obviously if you have watched the episode you know which scene this is. The way we filmed this was a little tricky. David and i went through the scene recording down the script so we knew what to say. Since we chose teddy bears to represent the characters, it was just a voice over scene. After we got the script, David recorded his part separately and then i did mine. I wanted to be Omar so it would be a little funnier and Brother Mousone was voiced by David. After we recorded our lines, that it was for the scene. Since it’s a spooky scene, we recorded it in the parking deck behind Alvey. Keep in mind, this isn’t suppose to be serious. teddy bears as gangsters? Really? Hopefully you enjoy it!
Second Scene: Carcetti & ColvinÂ
The second scene we chose to do from episode 11 was when Carcetti confronts Colvin at his home. Colvin is on the stoop of his home and Carcetti just rolls up. This is really important because this confrontation benefits both of them and it also involves the Hamsterdam situation which is huge in this season. It was a little different this time because Demi was the voice of Colvin and Sam for Carcetti. Other than that, it was the same. We dubbed the voices of the bear and put it all together. This scene wasn’t as funny as the first scene but it was still silly. Again, teddy bears? Laugh! Well, a quick change to this. Our video was pretty long compared to other videos made by our class so we decided to cut this scene. Don’t worry, keep an eye out for a blooper video/deleted scenes. I promise!
Third Scene: Getting Stringer (Second computer scene)
The next scene was when the detail finally gets Stringer on his phone. This was really interesting to film. Since i had the biggest laptop (ha yeah i’m awesome) we used it to look like the computer. We then had to get all the teddy bears possible and have them huddle around it. Since it’s a little difficult to make them move, we did the voices and had them sit there. It was a little awkward at the end when they’re all celebrating because when we recorded the sound, we were all like “ha ha ha…”. It sounded pretty fake but funny also! That was really the whole scene. I think it turned out fine!
Fourth Scene: Good night StringerBell
This was the final and most important scene of the episode. Stringer gets got. It really is sad scene but everyone saw it coming. It was either Stringer or Avon and Avon just got there first. Well, he leaked the information first. Anyways! The previous scenes filmed took roughly 3-4 hours. I figured we would be able to film all of this in one day but that wasn’t the case. I couldn’t spend another day filming because that week was seriously crazy for me. Since Omar has one line in this scene, i offered to record my audio and send it to Meredith when she was editing. This worked out. I wanted to be consistent with the Omar voice so i did it as best as possible. At the end of the day, it was okay that i couldn’t make it. The video itself turned out great. So, if you want more details on how this final scene was filmed, look at my other group member’s posts! Now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for. The video! I’ll post it below. ENJOY!
Oh boy, I actually got to cuss in a school assignment! For the Swede a scene video assignment, me and fellow ds106’er John recreated the iconic scene from season 1, episode 4. Of course, we decided to add our own spin to it using the resources we had available, as we lacked the items necessary for a murder scene investigation.
Special thanks to John Robie for being our camera man. With his help, it was a simple matter of editing the shots together in windows movie maker, and changing the audio levels so we were loud enough to be heard.
Maggie and I decided to so our swede on Season 3, Episode 11 of The Wire. We wanted to try to include as much as  the plot as we could, so we broke the episode down into 13 main scenes. Next, we planned out the days we’d shoot, the times, and the locations. We even asked DTLT and fellow DKC tutors to help with being extra parts. Maggie created a Google Doc that had all of swede planned out and she wrote the script. We used my camera, but we edited it together. We tried to make sure we each played the same character(s) throughout the scenes to provide some continuity. This swede was for the assignment, “Swede a Scene” worth 4.5 stars.
We tried to make some of our props/costumes fit the characters, such as Omar’s trench coat, and Brother Mouzone’s bowtie and blazer. Once we got all of our clips, we imported them into iMovie and trimmed down all of our outtakes. We also got some footage for our title sequence and added that to the swede as well. Lastly, we downloaded the intro and credits songs and sped them up to fit our swede.
For my final video assignment for the week Stefanie and I did “Swede a Scene” (4.5 stars). We decided that it would be easier and more fun if we did it together. It would allow us more people to work with rather than having to do a scene where it was just one person or where we would have to take on the role of several different people (more than we had to in this one).
How we did it:
Stefanie and I brainstormed for a while on which scene we thought we should do. Stefanie had the idea to go with this one because it would be fun, and I agreed! We could make it really funny and fun and cheesy which is kind of what we tried to do. Originally one of us was going to be Omar but I managed to convince my wonderful boyfriend to take on that role instead, it took a little coaxing but I got him to agree. He also brought an awesome camera for us to use–you may not be able to tell because YouTube cut down the quality but it looked great while we were making it.
Our sets consisted of inside and outside of Stefanie’s house and outside of my house. I did much of the recording with Stefanie recording the scenes that I was in (and with my boyfriend’s help because neither Stefanie nor I had really used a camera like that to video tape with before). We had to re-do very few scenes but it still took us well over an hour to get everything recorded. I was surprised at how long it took. Stefanie and I both said we couldn’t imagine how long recording a whole episode or even a whole series would take. I know it gave me a whole new appreciation for the work that directors and actors do.
Once we had all of the scenes recorded, we went to the Convergence Center to use the Macs to do the video editing. This was upon Groom’s suggestion that I try that rather than Windows Live Movie Maker because I wasn’t happy with the amount of editing I was able to do on Movie Maker. I was extremely happy with what we were able to do using iMovie. It took a little while for us to figure out the processes (and we still haven’t quite figured it all out) but we definitely had fun figuring it out. We had to import all of the videos (which I took from the memory card and put on my thumb drive so we could have access to them in the ITCC) into iMovie. Then we had to add the scenes that we needed into the project. We moved them around and had to cut out the yelling of “GO” at the beginning of each one (haha). My favorite edit that we made was at the end where Omar (Ryan) walks into Stefanie’s house and closes the door and then we cut to the inside with him closing the door. I was super proud of that edit haha.
When we finished editing the timing of the different scenes we moved onto the sounds. It was really windy on the day that we recorded so we had to be careful what we did with the sound. We found that you could insert sound effects using iMovie that were already on the computer. So we did that for almost all of the scenes. Even the outdoor ones. Sometimes we had to cut out the sounds that were there naturally because the wind was too loud or whatever. Sometimes we even had to amplify what we were saying so you could actually hear it (and some of Ryan’s scenes you still can’t hear because he talks super low and quietly). We amplified some scenes as much as we could and it is still hard to hear but we didn’t know what else we could do. We added background music to the scene were Omar is in the store getting the cereal. We took the liberty of changing it from asking if they had Honey Nut Cheerios to asking if they had Fruity Pebbles. We thought it would be funnier. We didn’t really change any other lines. But there also weren’t really any lines in this scene. We did change the drugs from pill form to powder form (kosher salt) because none of us had a whole bunch of pills lying around (thankfully). After we were done adding the background sounds, we added a title and a credits page, as well as the bloopers at the end. Then voila, we were done.
We uploaded it to YouTube and you can find the video here:
 I hope you enjoy our swede. We’ve been waiting for HBO to call. Still no call yet…
