I love puns. Anyways, the second video assignment I did this week was Charlie Chaplin’s Foley Artist, worth 4 1/2 stars. The assignment was to add sound effects for an originally silent Charlie Chaplin short. I chose one called Recreation, which was one of the few able to be accessed at this time.
I really enjoyed being able to live out my dreams of being a foley artist. When I was younger, my family and I would spend hour upon hour with this special feature disc from a Shrek DVD which allowed you to dub lines and sound effects over scenes… it was hilariously strange and a special feature I wish was in more DVDs. Doing this assignment reminded me a lot of those days of adding silly sounds to beloved film scenes.
The sounds I added were done completely by me and things around me such as a water bottle, a phone, clapping and fingers on a computer. It honestly makes me laugh so much listening back to the 2 minutes I recorded because it sounds so silly but it’s a comedy so that’s not a bad thing! The more ridiculous the sound effect the better. Watch it down below and enjoy the foley stylings of yours truly.
I’m working with Windows Movie Maker. It took me a while to figure out the editing tool because stupidly I was reading it as if what I clipped was removed and of course its what is between the in and out points that remains. Because of that I have to reload the video each time I want to add a shot, but thats not too much trouble. My first thought in trying to remake the Chaplin video was that my favorite part of the video was Chaplin himself – his face and his actions. The only other thing in the shots with him at that time was the iron bars, which obviously reminded me of prison. So I figured it would be funny to give him something -else- to react to while behind bars and that made me think of interspersing film clips with the Chaplin video. I downloaded several prison scenes from famous movies including Silence of the Lambs, Grand Budapest Hotel, Stir Crazy, Ghostbusters and Shawshank Redemption. I didn’t do a ton of searching and scrapping stuff – I kind of let the scenes that I found dictate how I would create the movie. It took me a few hours to get comfortable with the tools (as explained above), but once I did, it was really no problem at all. I learned how to bring in music where I want it and how to select the point in the track where I want to begin by using in and out points. The only downside (which isnt much) about interspersing scenes with the Chaplin video is that every time you want to more more Chaplin in you have to download the whole video again because once you trim it just one piece, the rest is gone. I used the free music from incompetech- three songs, the first is the elevator music track called Local Forecast, then a funk thing called Your Call and I ended with a classical song called Danse Macabre. I thought about leaving some of the music track under the movie clips, but I liked the stark cuts better – thought it had more punch. YouTube was the source for all of the film clips – I simply looked up prison scenes (remembering the ones from Silence of the Lambs and Shawshank Redemption). The Movie Maker’s tool to add a title page and captions are very very simple and self-explanatory. Adding the music took a little while to figure out, because its actually a two-fold process – identifying where you want the music to come in and identifying what part of the music you want played. Once I figured that out, I was essentially done. I actually had to go back and reopen the finished project when I realized I hadn’t added any of the Chaplin sound. I figured out that only some tracks are downloadable from Soundcloud but luckily one of the tracks where the woman speaks was downloadable. I used that tiny piece of sound and stuck it in.
For one five star project, I decided to do a mystery story. I got my entire family involved and my kids were particularly into it, getting dressed up and helping me name the characters. I sketched out a shot list that helped me determine what order I ended up shooting in. I tried to shoot by staying on one side of the 180 degree line (also realized that by moving behind the actors that it gave me some easy points to use in editing – like when I was right behind someone and then wanted to cut to them speaking). One thing I realized was that I should have used by phone side to side instead of up and down and it would have given me a wider picture but oh well. Look for the cameo from my cat.
I also did a five star assignment called Highlight Reel – I used my favorite athlete, Mariano Rivera. Tehre were plenty of highlight reels already built on YouTube but I built me own – only using them for sources, not entire consequences. I enjoyed this and it wasn’t difficult. I am getting used to being able to download and move clips around easily, along with trying to manipulate sound by figuring out where I want it to start and end and also using fades.
My last assignment was a two star assignment called Capture the Beauty. The idea was to shoot a 6 second video with Vine which I did – showing the beautiful white tree in my front yard. The hardest part of this assignment was trying to figure out Vine. I signed up and shot multiple videos but couldnt figure out how to post or share them. Finally I ended up shooting it on my camera and then allowing Vine to take a video from the camera and I uploaded it and =then= was able to share it.
This has been my favorite unit so far and the skills I’m learning here I am already thinking about using for future projects once this class is over. The editing is so simple and so flexible and looks so clean, I can see a lot of possibilities. The process has made me more comfortable with the process of downloading and using files and trying different tools to see what works and what doesn’t. My wife (who is by training an Avid editor) wants me to teach the tools to her.
POSSIBLE DS106 PROJECT!!!!!!
A thought for a possible DS106 video assignment is called Car Chase! The assignment is to use existing movie footage and reconstruct a car chase from beginning to end – for example, start with Frank Drebin telling the driver to follow that car, then build your car chase until it comes to some sort of an end. Bonus points for unusual music – make sure to add a title page that sets up the chase.
For this Assignment, rated 4 stars. I had to mute the audio track on this section of ‘The Lions Cage’.
I used Adobe Premiere Pro for this, (as usual). It’s the easiest to use and also gives me the ability to remove the audio too. Once the audio was muted and removed, I inserted an new music track. I used music that I got off YouTube for another Uni project and already had saved on my desktop. The music is happy and gives the audience a false sense of security, because literally anything could happen.
Then after looking through other student Foley sounds on Sound cloud. I downloaded them and put them in with the music. I had to monitor the audio levels to make sure that the music wasn’t too loud, or the Foley wasn’t too quiet etc.
As my birthday is in February, I was tasked with creating Foley sounds for the actions between 00:30 and 01:00 in Charlie Chaplin’s The Lion’s Cage. Some of the sounds were tough to create with just my body and the items I found around me, but overall I feel like I accurately recreated all the sounds of the clip.
I identified seven main sounds that I needed to create for the segment: the handkerchief swish, Chaplin’s footsteps, the door opening, the tiger’s roar, the door slamming shut, the lion’s tail swishing, and the water spilling. The first sound, the handkerchief, was definitely the most challenging to recreate. I tried several things, such as shaking scarves and other clothing items, but none of them created a sound that I really liked. The final sound for this action that I settled on was created by rapidly rubbing my hand on my jacket sleeve. The footsteps were made by hitting one of my shoes against a table in rhythm with the video. The door opening sound is literally a door opening-I tried to find the squeakiest door possible as the door in the video looked like it would have some kind of squeak. The tiger’s roar is a very sad attempt at sounding ferocious by me. For the door slamming shut I went with dropping a flip flop on a table, as it created a better sound than an actual door closing. The lion’s tail was probably the second most challenging behind the handkerchief in the sense that it was difficult to think of a sound to make. To make this sound, I simple slapped my hands together a few times. Recreating the water spilling was probably the easiest sound to make. I took a cup of water outside and poured it on the ground.
After all the sounds were recorded, some editing was necessary in Audacity to match them as closely as possible to the film.
Try watching the film while listening to the sounds to see how close they match!
For reference, this assignment is listed under video assignments and is worth:
This is my video of Charlie Chaplin, The Lion’s Cage. I ran into a lot of issues when I used Windows Movie Maker. So I had to do some research another type of software and found Wondershare Video Editor. I had to start my project over from scratch and I could not add any real video affects. after finding the software I did see one of my fellow classmates used Wolndershare Video Editor for one of her assignments. I am still learning the kinks, but it was much easier to add the time lines and rearrange them.
Credits to the following SoundCloud creators.
First I downloaded the vide using Macx YouTube and imported it into WonderShare Video Editor
You want to open a new Project
Once the video imported or upload, you drag to the timeline
I downloaded all of the the SoudCloud sounds and downloaded it to the media space
Then you drag each media sound to the timeline in the order you want your video to play
Once you have every thing lined up you will need to play the video and line it up with the audio. If you notice I had to move my last part of the audio over, there is a gap. That portion was only 24 seconds long and it did not blend in like the rest. So I had to make adjustments. I did not really get to add any effect or additional audio because I had to start from scratch from the original video I created through Windows Movie Maker, but I could not get it to upload to YouTube.
Once you have added and edited the video to your desire,
Under the Edit tab you can select create Video and then after select Upload to Youtube.
Here are some screen shots of the effects you can use
You can do little texts in the video as I did in the Homer video
This one is for effects
This one is for PiP I cannot really say what that stands for, I just start using the software today.
Technology always seems to fail exactly when it is needed. I have been using iMovie more frequently than I normally do because of ds106 and it seems to have taken its toll. Every time I try to create a new project and begin working on it the software crashes unexpectedly. So this project that should really only take a little over an hour has turned into a half of a days worth of a mess. I tried to download a free trial of Final Cut Pro X, but of course it wouldn’t run when I tried opening the program. I went online and tried every last suggestion with no success, so I gave up after about five hours and downloaded a newer version of iMovie, which set me back a few dollars, but finally my issues were resolved. Enough about my technological deficiencies and more about the story!
The story is rather simple because it is somewhat like Planet of the Apes. Animals have taken over the planet, but not just normal animals, circus animals (cue dramatic music)! Charlie Chaplinn plays a man who just escaped from an animal run prison and is now fleeing the scene only to get caught in a cage with a lion. Luckily for him another human had just escaped and was near by to help him:
I wish I could make a feature length film of what life would be like living under our circus animal oppressors. I imagine that just like in Planet of the Apes, the humans try to escape and revolt against the animals. Of course this all takes place after Chaplin escapes from the Lion’s Den as I like to call it!
The video is not the greatest because it has sort of corkiness to it, so dramatizing it with epic music kind of makes it funny. I wish I could have added more, but it has been a little difficult getting used to this new version of iMovie. I am definitely liking the new version, but I think it will take a while to get fully adjusted. Though this project took me all day, mainly because of my computer issues it still was box load of fun!
Editing the video really wasn’t all that different from before just copying and pasting sound and footage together. What was difficult for me was adding in additional media like the text and and actually going in and editing individual pieces of footage and audio. Finding all the different tools I normally use was a little bit of a pain, but after a while I got used to the new process. Probably the hardest part of all was just selecting the right clips I wanted to edit. For whatever reason this new version of iMovie makes it really difficult to select clips with a trackpad. Here is what the new iMovie software looks like in case you were wondering:Adding the audio was simple: I took the audio clips from random students on Sound Cloud downloaded them and then just pasted them in the correct positions with little editing. I wanted to use more audio from our class, but most students including myself made the mistake of not making the audio track available to download. Just a small oversight and not that big of a deal. For the music I used a song called “Black Vortex” which I acquired from Royalty Free Music. If there is anything specific you would like to know please let me know! Also, I hope you enjoyed the video!
To me, this video seemed like one that would go viral pretty quickly. I think that people would be very entertained by some guy getting locked in a lion enclosure. Therefore, I decided to create a story in which This video has been an internet sensation:
I don’t usually watch Tosh.0, but I know that the show makes fun of online videos so I assumed it would be appropriate. I used an episode uploaded onto YouTube to get the clip for this assignment. Here are the Foley clips that I used, I tried to select ones that were created for this class section, however for some reason there were some clips that I couldn’t download (and some were longer than 30 seconds) so I had to use previous work.
I used this website to download the videos off of YouTube. I then fit them into Windows Movie Maker. It was really easy to edited them to fit together, I just used the “Split” tool under Video Edit to take the parts of the Tosh.0 clip that I wanted. After that I downloaded the sounds off of SoundCloud and fit them in as well! Super simple! I saved it as an MP4 and had to upload it to YouTube and embed it from there.
The only problem was that I had a lot of time at the end of the video that didn’t seem to have audio to go with it. There were only two Foleys for the last section, and neither of which were from very recently. My only thought is that previous classes much have been using a shorter version of the video, because all of my other sounds fit so I don’t think I missed a section or anything like that. I debated cutting it out, but decided to learn the entire video and just have it silent until the very end!
It’s almost time for the best act in the circus! Leo the Lion is an extraordinary, popular lion that is the envy of all other acts. People from all over come to see this magnificent creature perform!
But wait, oh no! There’s trouble!
I got the idea to do the Madagascar theme from searching through movies that featured lions. I knew already that many have done and will do a Lion King clip, and though this is a great movie I wanted to be a little different. At first I was trying to think how can I include a clip from Madagascar in the middle of the foley clip, but I couldn’t think of any good stories.
So I started looking up clips of lion training gone wrong and found some pretty funny ones but none that gave me what I wanted. I wanted a video that featured the lion more than the human, and thats when I found the clip of Alex’s show. I downloaded it using http://en.savefrom.net/.
Now that I had my story straight, I went to the sound clips on soundcloud and found the ones I wanted to use.
After I downloaded these, I imported them to Audacity and put them in their appropriate spots.
I didn’t have to change any of the sounds becuase they all fit perfectly. So after I did this I saved it and went to Windows Live Movie Maker to start my story.
To start, I uploaded the foley video and turned the video volume all the way off. I then clicked add title in 6 different places that I wanted to have text in. These included the beginning titles and the ending credits.
For a music background I went to Freesound and downloaded a clip of circus music, which I then imported into the movie maker along with the Audacity sound clip I previously made. After that I uploaded it to Youtube with the appropriate tags.
Before coming with your family to the circus, be sure to watch the video below! It provides you with many examples of what NOT to do at the circus to make sure you stay safe on your visit.
Charlie Chaplin was kind enough to make a visit to the circus for us and make lots of bad decisions in order for us to make this tutorial for you!
This was such a challenging assignment! I have been struggling all week with how to make this clip have a different meaning. I looked at examples from previous students and was so jealous of other people’s creativity. My ideas were so outlandish that they seemed too stupid and unrealistic to try to do. So today I was brainstorming some more about this video, and I started to think about how Chaplin makes bad decision after bad decision that gets him into this predicament at the circus. I guess tutorials have been on my mind also because of our assignment this week, so I thought, why not make a tutorial out of his mistakes and show people what NOT to do when the come to the circus? I’m not really sure if this qualifies as a story with a beginning, middle, and end but it was the best I could come up with.
I started out by going to this site to download the background music I wanted to use. I found a clip under the Silent Film section that had an action theme so it would fit the clip. Next, I downloaded the foley sounds for each section of the clip from SoundCloud. Here are the foley clips I used:
Then, I used QuickTime Player to record the video. I used the “Screen Recording” feature which will record anything that happens on your screen. I started the recording and played the video, then just stopped it when the video was over. Save the video to your computer. Easy enough!
Next, I went into iMovie and added the background music to my project. Go under the music note icon and search for your audio. Then, drag it to the project space to the left. The green box should appear like below:
Next, we will import the movie we recorded. Click File>Import>Movies and select your movie from wherever you saved it to your computer.
Your video should appear under events. Select it, then drag it below where you dragged the background music. It should look something like this:
Turn off any volume from your video by selecting it – make sure it has the yellow border around it. Click the settings symbol and then click Audio Adjustments.
Turn the volume down to 0%.
Next, add the foley clips downloaded from SoundCloud the same way we added the background music. Rearrange them as needed by dragging them around. Make sure they are layered over one another so they will all play at once.
To add any text, title pages, or credits, click the “T” symbol as seen below and adjust as needed.
Write up a blog post embedding your new version of the story. Explain where the idea came from, and include reference URLs for all media you used. Also include a screen shot of your video editing interface.
I knew this assignment would be challenging and it lived up to it. Talk about using all we have learned in one homework assignment! I was able to download the files just fine using http://en.savefrom.net/ and also soundcloud to get all the files. I used moviemaker on my laptop to edit the movie and audacity to do the sound track because it was easier to work with the files. I also found my singing lion on YouTube
My story for this Charlie Chaplin reimagined is he is an ‘animal whisper’ that can talk to animals via his mind. He has found himself in a circus full of crazy animals that are either super excited to talk to him (horse and dog) or mostly bored with him (lion). The woman in the story does not get that he can talk to animals telepathically and is confused. However, in the end the lion gets tired of him interrupting his sleep, is a little playful and sings that he is sleeping, and then yells at him to leave him alone. This scares Charlie and he runs out and up a pole. But everything is fine and he comes down.
I hope you like it! Here it is:
I couldn’t have done all this without my source files used. Here you go!
Sound files
Original video clips
Screen showing my movie editing:
Video Editing screen shot
Overall it was a good experience and great use of Movie Maker. However, I think it would have been easier with a better movie editing software like Apple has but I can only do what I have free on laptop. The sound piece was hardest and the titles.
Not bad for my first time if I say so myself!
