For my other mashup assignment, I chose to do Actor Transformation {****}. You always see actors/actresses on television and movies that you say “wow, they have really grown up”. When I was reading this assignment’s details, one actress came to my mind. Miley Cyrus.

I wanted my transformation video of Miley to have clips, pictures, and songs. I mean this is a mashup assignment! I got my video clips and pictures from when she was on Big Fish {2003}, Hannah Montana {2006}, The Last Song {2010}, and recent pictures of her {2012-13}. The song {Ordinary Girl} is from her show Hannah Montana. I thought the song fit just right :)

I got the clips from YouTube and converted it through KeepVid. Doing this made the clips easy to open in my Windows Movie Maker. I ordered the clips/pictures from young Miley to older Miley. You can clearly see how this young lady has changed – it’s kind of scary!

The reason I put a then and now picture was because I wanted the viewer to be able to look at her young and look at her now in order to compare the two. She looks a little scary now, what with bleach blond hair and all. I wanted to remind the viewer of the sweet, young, innocent Miley they saw at the beginning of this video. They might have forgotten because Miley looks so crazy psycho different.

The reason this is a mashup assignment is because I took the audio from a recent interview and played it when I was showing the pictures of her recently. This aspect changes what she is trying to say. She is saying that her parents were strict and that’s ok because she grew up fine but the pictures show otherwise. I thought that this mashup would add a bit of comedy to this video.

Blog post song title: Ordinary Girl – Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus - it doesn’t matter. It’s the same person.

This week we had to complete 6 stars worth of Mashup Assignments.

The first assignment I chose was “Growing up with Drew Barrymore.” It is a 4-star assignment and the purpose was to find a real actor/actress that has been in many movies over the course of their life time and to “mash” them together and show growth in the actor/actress over time and different movies. We had two use a minimum of 4 different clips and the video had to be at least 2 minutes long

For my movie, I chose Dakota Fanning. I looked at both IMBd and Wikipedia to find out what movies she had been in. Of course, I’d seen her in a couple movies and new who she was, but I didn’t know all that she was involved with. I found that here roles were very diverse and across the board. I’m not sure if they really show the “growth” that the assignment asks for. But I do think that it shows how talented Dakota is and how she is able to really express herself and fully commit to the character she is portraying.

Dakota has had a very successful career for such a young actress, she was on many TV shows, prior to the start of her movie career at 7 years old. She has also been nominated for any awards.

Here are the movies I chose to play in the mashup:

• I Am Sam (2001) 
• Uptown Girls (2003)
• Man on Fire (2004)
• The Secret Life of Bees (2008)
• Eclipse (2010)
• Now is Good (2012)

To make the mashup I downloaded all the clips from youtube using KeepVid and used MPEG StreamClip to cut a couple down. I then uploaded everything into iMovie, added a title and credit slide and added titles to each movie clip. I did some minor adjusting and added a transition slide at the end. I know the first clip from I Am Sam is a bit long. But this was Dakota’s very first movie and perhaps her best. Dakota is very skilled, as you will see in the mashup video. She goes from the daughter of a man who is mentally ill, to an upper east side “snob” to a southern preteen in the 1960s, to a vampire, and then a terminally ill patient. Clearly this girl nows how to be an actress.

Here are a few screenshots of my work in iMovie

I hope you like the film!

For one of my mashup assignments, I wanted to do the What Color is Your World {**}. I always feel like the color yellow is a color that is forever in my life. Also, yellow is proven to make people happier. I don’t know how it’s proven or where the evidence is. But I can buy that. I mean, I am a happy person. And you’ll be happy too once you watch this video/song mashup of how the color yellow is in my world.

I set Friday {4/19} aside to take pictures of my day and my encounters with the color yellow. Looking back at the pictures, I realized that Friday was not special. Everything that I encountered that was yellow is something that I encounter everyday. So, yellow truly is the color of my world.

I already had the song {link at the bottom of this post} that I wanted to have play in the background so I inserted it right in my Windows Movie Maker. I also inserted the pictures from my iPhone into my movie maker. Then, it was time to get editing! I ordered the pictures from the start of my day to the end of it. I thought that doing this would fully tell my whole day in a story.

Here is my yellow world:

I used effects like zoom in, zoom out, pan left, pan right, and tilt to intensify each picture. Each of the pictures special effects was purposefully chosen. For example, the Splenda picture tilts so you can better read the label on the sugar packet :)

So, are you happier now??

Blog post song title: Yellow – Coldplay

A couple weeks ago we were required to submit a few pieces of media that we had no used for a specific ds106 assignment. However, since this week is Remix week we were told to take these old media pieces and create a story out of them.

All the unused media was found at this website. Additionally, there is actually a Mashup assignment attached to this project, it’s called “Recycle the media.”

We had to use at least 5 pieces of media, and 2 different media forms (visual, audio, etc). All the pictures came from the website. Unfortunately all the audio files just said “loading” and wouldn’t play except for one which made crashing noises and did not fit with my story. So instead, I included a song that I had, “Brighter than the Sun” by Colbie Calliet.

Before I share the video, here is the story:

It’s a beautiful Spring Monday Morning and it’s time for Serena to get ready for class. She wake up and pours herself a big cup of coffee in her favorite coffee cup! Once the caffeine kicks in, it’s time to get dressed and decide which heels will match her outfit perfectly (God Bless her for walking around campus in those high heels!!). Serena has 5 minutes to get to class, good thing her dorm is right next to the building her class is in. Down the steps she goes, she can’t be late! Along the way, she sees all the gorgeous spring flowers in full bloom, it’s her favorite season. Oh there’s Chandler, the academic building that her business class is in. Serena made it to class with a minute to spare! Good thing this is the last week of classes, waking up for an 8am class is not an easy task.

 

One assignment we had to do this week was the Recycle the Media. This assignment did not count towards our six stars of mashup/remix that we need for these two weeks.

A couple of weeks ago, each DSer had to submit three pieces of media that they had but never used for assignments. The task at hand was the take five pieces of the media on this site and mash them up so they tell a story.

When I first got to the site, I was surprised at how many pieces we had that were never used! And they were good…I wonder why these pieces got the boot? It’s like the island of misfit toys. How sad.

I looked through the collection for some pieces of media that atleast looked like they went together. I thought that if they were similar enough, I would be able to turn them into a coherent story.

And I edited them with Windows Movie Maker. It was a very simple process. I downloaded all of the media pictures and an audio file that I wanted to my computer. I imported them in Windows Movie Maker. I added a title page and credits and viola! Here is my finished product:

The story arc goes a little something like this: a young girl attended UMW. She thought she could never graduate but eventually…she did! That night after graduation, she was going out with all of her friends to celebrate. She had a lot of choices to make but for the first time, they weren’t academic choices…they were shoe choices.

This assignment was fun to do. I’m still shocked at the number of “misfit” media pieces on the islanDS. {<see what I did there? ;)}

Blog post title: Island of Misfit Toys – Rudolph

One tool that was suggested to us when remixing and mash-uping was Mozilla Popcorn Maker. In order to experiment with this, Alan created a video for us to remix. He left spaces open where we could add new media. Here is the video:

Yeah. I know, funny.

I was kind of scared to remix this video. When I first watched it, I saw the open spaces where he alotted us to add media and I was worried scared intimidated. AHHHH.

The Popcorn Maker made this intimidation feeling a little better. It took a while to get used to it because I had never used it before. It said I was missing a flash player but I always just ignore those information pop-ups. However, when I added media, Alan’s clips’ timing would be off. I installed my missing flash player.

Even after I conformed and installed my flash player, it seemed a little complicated trying to piece all of the objects together. I wanted it to flow well. Maybe it was just the way this assignment was laid out. It didn’t seem realistic to me {although a trip to the sun isn’t!} because it. If you want to know what I’m talking about, watch my finished product:

I created a lot of the pictures by editing them so that they would be more realistic. For example, I took a screenshot of the final grade screen on the original video and typed in my text. I overlayed the pictures with the videos. It took a lot of trial and error! A. LOT.

I got the sun video from YouTube. This is the video that I play at the end on the vacation clip. I got this song clip from SoundCloud:

I was trying to make this vacation video funny {aka – why I chose the sun to be the destination!} I think this was a great assignment to do for a remix tester. I got to test out the water and practice remixing. I will say that I’m going to try another editor for future remix/mashup assignments because this one seemed to take a lot of my patience {and I’m working with pre-kindergarten kids today so that’s not good}. It always took so long to load…and still does even now that it’s done. So sorry if you are waiting for a super duper long time for it to load. I did like how I could change and add to a video with my own work. I can see how this tool is liked by people when they are remixing/mashing things up.

The story that this *new* video tells is an interesting one. Alan said he wanted a vacation because this semester was rough… and boy, did he get one. I hope he also packed his sunscreen! I hear the UV-B rays and the risk for skin cancer is crazy high when you stay on the Sun!

Thank you for booking your vacation with Runner Bug Destinations: If it’s your destination, we will run you right there!

Cash is favored as an easy payment method. However, checks can be made out to Miss Runner Bug.

Blog post title: The Sweet Escape – Gwen Stefani