In order to produce this video, I used Premiere which gave me the opportunity to add music along with my voiceover of the poem called Roads We Travel by Marilyn Lott. I’m not familiar with her other work or sure if she has any other work but I found this poem online and really like the message of it. This is past footage that I had on my flash drive and decided to put it to good use. Last week I found a website that provides free music and it’s really great sounding as well. It’s called Epidemic Sound, and provides legit music. I enjoyed putting this together!
This was by far the most enjoyable project this week since I got to document my life experiences. I downloaded Adobe Premiere Clip, which is an awesome video editing application for your phone. This made compiling my videos and adding a soundtrack really easy and convenient. I highly recommend the free software. If I had an opportunity to record the videos again, I would film more of them oriented landscape style so that more of the video frame is utilized. And given more time, I would like learn how to switch between the background music and sound of the original video. I think I need a more advanced photo editor. I could export the video to another editor, specifically Adobe Premiere Pro – however that is not free software and will require some additional time to learn.
Narrative Ambiance
I like that the background noise gives the video a grittiness matching the editing. the poet takes a more melancholy tone with the is setting, yet the words remain hopeful.
There’s something really simple and beautiful about the way Benjamin Alire Sáenz writes. I’ve read this particular book, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, a few times now. I’m always amazed by how much he says in so little words. The book is poignant, and real, and painful sometimes. I decided to read chapter seven for this assignment because I think it’s the perfect example of all those things. In this chapter, the reader can tell how much Ari, the main character, is struggling with something in him that he can’t see. In that same vein, the reader and tell how much he yearns to feel equal to Dante. I chose to do a lot of still shots of objects or scenery for this video for a few reasons: I wanted the viewer to be able to focus on my words, and I wanted it to feel a little lonely. I also tried to pick images that would enhance the words I was reading. For example, when Ari points out that Dante’s smile is sad, I filmed a shot of the cracks in my deck to show that even things that are solid have gaps. There are more literal shots too, such as when the discussion turns to God. I also wanted the video to follow the narrative of the scene, so I started out filming in my room and then moved away from it, as the narrative and conversation moves from Ari’s room to bigger things.
I chose this assignment because I love reading and I love the thought of a film making a reading more powerful. Originally I wanted to film more of a ‘summer’ themed video, with shots of the pond and trees outside my apartment and things like that, but chapter seven of this book caught my attention and thus the video was filmed mostly indoors.
To create this film, I used iMovie on my phone. When you open up a new project in the app, you get a blank film reel to work on as well as some tips for using the app.
The first step to creating your film is to add a clip. To do this, you simply click the icon, tap ‘All’, and then tap which clip you want to add onto the reel. After that, you can tap the icon that appears, and the clip will be added onto your reel.
After I added on my first clip, I could then record my reading. You can do this right from the iMovie app. By tapping the icon on the main reel screen, you are given the option to start a recording over your clips. You can retake the audio as many times as you need to (unfortunately, I needed to a lot).
Once I had my recording, I added in the rest of the clips and adjusted the length as needed to fit what I was saying. I also muted each clip by tapping the icon and lowering the dial to zero. That way, my reading could be clearly heard.
The main bulk of the reading video finished, the only step left was to add title and ending credits. I debated a long time over adding in music too, but in the end decided I wanted people to be able to focus more on the words, since it was a quiet moment in the book as well. Rather than having a still photo for my title screen, I decided I wanted those to be part of the video as well. I went and got two new clips that I felt opened and closed out the video well. To add text to a clip, you tap where it is on the reel and then the icon.
You’re given quite a few options for text in your video; it’s a good idea to sit down and consider what effect you want your video to have, and also how much text each title screen will need.
Text chosen and credits written, I decided that my video was done. I tapped ‘Done’, and then uploaded my video onto Youtube.
The second and final video project I chose to do this week is the 4-and-a-half (?!) star Narrative Ambiance assignment. I chose it because I thought it would be easy. I was dead. wrong.
I like to film the weather – if it’s raining, windy, snowing, you know I’ve got a few minutes of video of it. I make videos of the trees in my neighborhood in fall, too. There’s always that one specific day when all the trees are at their most brilliant colors: yellows, oranges, and those amazing, beautiful REDS! All cast against a cloudy, gray autumn sky. But for this project, I wanted to use some of my videos of snowfall, because I’d come across a poem that hit me in the heart.
Carl Phillips’ White Dog, to me, is about knowing when it’s time to let something go. This past October, we had to make the decision to let our beloved cat go. He was only 14, but he knew it was his time. We couldn’t make him stay for us. To let him go that autumn was to really, finally, totally let him go. He was an indoor/outdoor cat, but this was the one time he wouldn’t be slinking back through our door. We wanted to let him go because we loved him, and that was that.
Here he is being used as a pillow by our bug-eyed beagle mix. They were best friends and hardcore snugglebugs!!!
The snowfall as a visual was more than a “poem about snow -> snow video” thing, too. Snow and winter is usually used to represent death, or at least a long slumber. I think that’s partly why the poem itself reminded me of the critters we’ve had to say goodbye to – imagining them bouncing off through the snow, disappearing into it!!
This project was HARD, not just like “I had computer trouble” but I had to take a few breaks now and then to love on our living pets. There was a lot of stuff with Windows Movie Maker that I got frustrated with – I feel like I must have a crappy version, like the one they give you to try and convince you to buy the full version. I had the worst time trying to tack on the opening and closing credits without them being “white text on black screen” blech. Anyway, the music I used for the background is Snowfall (final) by ShadyDave on Freesound.org.
F+or 4.5 stars, I did the Narrative Ambiance assignment, which asked us to:
Take a favorite poem, inspiring quote or passage from a book (or even a movie monologue, if you like!) and record yourself reading it. Then set it to original video you’ve recorded with some kind of music or sound effect in the background. The final video should be at least a minute long.
The goal of this assignment is to tell a story that evokes a specific mood–sadness, joy, hope, anger, fear, peace, wonder–and to do so not only through the literal meaning of whatever you choose to read, but through your use of original video and music or sound effects. Be creative! There’s a ton of different ways to interpret this assignment. When you write your blog post about it, tell us what mood or feeling you wanted to convey, what you want the viewer to take away from your video, and how successful you feel you were.
It should be fairly obvious why I chose this assignment: I love reading and writing. I decided to read one of my favorite quotes. Its by author Jack Kerouac. I’ve only ever read his novel On the Road, his most popular work. Its a little strange, to say the least, but a great read; its considered a “modern” (that is, the 20th century or contemporary sense of modern) classic. This quote, on the other hand, comes from Lonesome Traveler, a collection of short stories he authored based on “a compilation of Kerouac’s journal entries about traveling” according to Wikipedia. I actually found it on Pinterest, of all places.
One of these days I’m going to read Lonesome Travelerthough–like Kerouac’s other works, I connect to the mixture of alienation, wanderlust, and desire for freedom that living in the impersonal modern world leaves me with. One day I’m going to travel the world just like he did and hopefully write something at least a fraction as great as his works…But first I’m going to do this assignment.
For this assignment I used Windows Movie Maker, which is loaded onto most Windows computers. I’m sure Mac has a similar program, but I don’t know anything about it, so the tutorial on this assignment is really only going to be helpful to show you how I did things.
First, I hit Title to add a title. The little window entitled Add title appears when you mouse over the button.
I came up with my weird-sounding title from an interesting term I found that means:
It doesn’t fully describe the mood I’m trying to capture, but it does go with the ambiance. I wanted the aesthetic of On the Roadand the nomadic visions of Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl, but a little gentler–essentially the aesthetic of the story I want to write one day.
To adjust the duration of each piece, you just go to the tab called Edit to adjust as follows:
I also added credits for my video by choosing from the different options for credits. At this point I also found myself wanting to adjust the text with the text editor, which comes up whenever you click on the text box on the slide. Experiment with different fonts, colors, sizes, transitions, lengths…I did ultimately settle for simpler stuff, but there’s a lot you can do with this software.
I put a music track over the opening credits.
Then I added my video via Add Videos and photos. Its a video I filmed a while back while on vacation, available here on YouTube as below.
It seemed appropriately peaceful and serene, but also a little lonely and dull, just right for the idea I wanted to convey.
To add the words narrating my video, I clicked on Record Narration.
This is a Video Assignment and its worth 4 stars. This assignment was to take a video of a natural setting and then record yourself reading a poem or a story that would kind of resemble the scenery that you are in. I chose to use my host character again in this assignment and for her to pick her favorite poem and then recorded it. I recorded me and my friend driving in Fredericksburg since it seemed that it would be the most natural thing to do with driving and having my character stare out the window as she reads a really dark poem by Theodre Roethke. I then took the video and leaned the color towards the black and white to make it more bleak and set a mood for it. I think if there was anything I could do to improve this assignment it would have to be maybe have a more enticing scenery or add cool effects to the video itself.
I took this monologue from the horror video game Alan Wake by Remedy Entertainment. Just to be clear on a few things, the Stephen King quote ends after the line “the poetry of fear.” The rest is the monologue from the game. Also, where the original line is “My name is Alan Wake. I’m a writer,” I inserted myself, Jack Neff.
I chose to do the Narrative Ambiance and incorporate it with Layla. The poem Fire and Ice by Robert Frost goes very well with Layla (alarmingly so) and I thought that it would be perfect for her. I tried to speak in the way she would, you know like husky and low toned but I suck. Anyway, since we are “changing over” I’ll stop talking.
I had once considered the world a wonderful place. You could have called me a romantic but in my line of work that doesn’t last long. I don’t see the world that way anymore and I laugh at how naive I was. The world my brother lives in is so much different than mine. We aren’t on the same plane of existence anymore even though I can look straight into his eyes. We’ve seen so many different things and we’ll continue to see the world in two opposing ways. The world will end differently for Terrence and myself. And that’s the way it should be.
This week I completed the four-star Video Assignment “Narrative Ambience” in regards to Caterina’s mother Alessandra in order to show and further explore her inexplicable lust for Italy, a fervent love that selfishly caused her to place her desires over her family at a young age. Having matured over time, Alessandra has realized just how much she gave up when she chose herself over her true love, her daughter, and has recently been feeling much regret over her utter foolishness. The music I chose (specifically the orchestral suit from the Lizzie McGuire movie, aka, the soundtrack to my childhood), takes the listener from a feeling of joy and adventure at the start of the track to a feeling of sadness mixed with hope by the end of it, the scenes set up to take you along similar peaks and valleys. I paired the track with e.e. cummings’ “I Carry Your Heart With Me” and picked out the most effective lines that encapsulate Alessandra’s daily musings, almost a mantra that is continuously on her mind as she embarks on her daily adventures. Though Cat is under the impression that she herself was the cause for her mother’s swift departure, the reality is that she was actually at odds with Wally and the progressive route he was taking when it came to his career. Missing out on Cat’s life has been the equivalent of her missing half her heart, and she wonders if one day she’ll ever get it back though.
For now though, she will simply wonder as she wanders.
(PS: I hope you enjoy all this lovely footage of Italy, filmed by yours truly! Isn’t it magical?! Like my own Disney Channel Original Movie :D)
I’ve definitely been intimidated by these video assignments, but this one allowed me to incorporate one of my favorite things: poetry. I also knew after watching the example version that this would be a great opportunity to use my character as part of the story.
Picking up where we last left Damon, he’s still feeling lost, confused, and more scared then ever since he’s now mixed up in additional trouble after that radio show and vacation with Bev. Damon has become scared of everything, most notably the darkness. Fear has crept into his life the way light creeps over the shadows, and it’s completely consuming him. Everywhere he turns there is mystery, and with mystery, there is terror.
I really liked this because I got to play with a lot of different ideas here. Most notably, I wanted to make sure I incorporated aspects of noir, so I played up the use of shadows and dramatic lighting. I learned the importance of making sure your camera work is strong, and in retrospect I should’ve been more careful with my shots, but the shaky feeling actually adds a human touch to the narrative I think.
