For this assignment, the objective was to pick a store that we frequent visit, and edit their original logo (using text, images. etc). Although I dislike the Macy’s here in Fredericksburg (kind of limited than other locations), I still visit from time to time to purchase garments. I usually browse through their Ralph Lauren Polo collection and see what they have to offer. I never pay full price, because frankly, their prices are ridiculously high. In the fall/winter seasons, I like to scoop up some Champion hoodies/sweatshirts that they carry. So those are mainly the two reasons why I shop there.
For the logo, I grabbed the original one off google images in high quality. I did not want to add any additional text, just a couple images. Next, I grabbed the Polo and Champion logos and it was a wrap as far as what I needed for my logo makeover. All 3 images were opened in Photoshop. For the Macy’s logo, I grabbed the eraser tool and got rid of the letter c. I used the Champion “C”. resized it, and put it in it’s place. Lastly, I cut out the Ralph Lauren pony logo and placed it in the red star after resizing (it just felt and looked right). It was a pretty simple task and straightforward, probably the easiest assignment this week. To sum it up, I guess this logo states that I shop at Macy’s because I am a Ralph Lauren and Champion addict.
I created this assignment called “10 Second Throwback.” For this assignment you have to create at least a 10 second long mashup of songs that are considered “throwbacks.” The music can be from any genre as long as it is nothing recent.
I choose to use two songs each 5 second clips. My first song is a classic from one of the most famous country artist of all time Johnny Cash. The song “Walk the Line” was recorded in 1956 and became Johnny Cash’s first number 1 billboard hit. The single remained on the record charts for 43 weeks, and sold over 2 million copies.
The second song that I choose to use to finish out my 10 second mashup was Conway Twitty’s 1981 ‘Tight Fittin’ Jeans’. The song peaked at number 1 in September. With 98 billboard singles and hundreds of album cuts picking just one of his classics was difficult.
If you pay attention to my blog, you can tell my life revolves around music so why not chose a music mashup assignment! I am very proud of this assignment, because I managed to cohesively mash parts of 4 songs together and make my own mini song. Here are the lyrics if your interested:
“i did it for the girl, she was like oh my god, its a small town throw down time to tall boy up let them tailgates down, lets get this thing started its my kinda party”
Definitely sounds like it describes me! For this one I was thinking a while about which lyrics I could blend and it would make sense and luckily I am really good with remembering lyrics and I used my favorite songs. Using my audio cutter app (which it won’t let me link for some reason) I cut clips from each song and used Audio Assistant to merge them together and save a final track.
This assignment seemed interesting right off the bat. It was worth 3 stars and we were to make a mashup of 4 or 5 different songs and take 3 second clips from each song. And of course they were to be some of our favorite songs and that made the assignment even better. Though it did get distracting because all I wanted to do was listen to the songs instead of doing the assignment.
I made this mashup using audacity, I had my songs already downloaded on my computer so I did not have too find them on youtube or another site. Once I finished the mashup the shortest I could get it was 12 seconds and I then uploaded it to soundcloud with the title mashup and that is down below.
For my second online assignment, I chose to do the 10 second mashup assignment (3 stars) where you combine four of your favorite songs, but condense them down to only 10 seconds altogether. For this assignment, I just took songs from my iTunes library and uploaded them to GarageBand, edited them together, then exported the track as an mp3 and uploaded it to soundcloud. See if you can guess the songs!
This post is a detailed tutorial of how to complete the assignment Mash-Up Trailers within the Video Assignments bank. This tutorial will be heavily based around the use of iMovie, which should definitely help the Mac users out there. This tutorial will also use my previous completion of this assignment Godzilla Vs. The Incredible Hulk to help guide the tutorial. If you would like to just simply watch my mashup trailer, here it is:
So pay attention, and hopefully you can develop a solid mashup trailer after this.
Step 1. Choose the movie/tv shows that you would like to mash up. This is the first and one of the most important steps. Choose as many movies/tv shows as you would like to use. For me, I chose one movie that I wanted to use in my trailer and then chose a movie that complements and/or parallels this movie very well. For example, I wanted to use Godzilla. I then went on to choose The Hulk for my other movie because it parallels the theme and tone of Godzilla very well.
Step 2. After you have chose the movies/shows you are using, it is time to develop your story for the trailer. The idea of a movie trailer is to tell, briefly, what the movie is about. This means that you need to create a simple storyline for your movie. Even though you won’t execute this in a full length movie, you will help display this storyline shortly in your trailer.
Step 3. Now, you will need to download all the media for your video. There are many different ways you can do this, and you should have a multitude of media for this. To get your video clips from the movies I suggest you use either Keepvid or ClipConverter. These are great for downloading YouTube videos by simply using the link to the video.
For downloading any audio from Youtube simply use this YouTube to MP3 converter, its quick and simple.
If you desire to download any sound effects, I suggest you use freesound. When gathering all your media, I suggest you not only get video from the movies/tv shows you have chosen but also any other outside sources, such as newscasts or other clips, that help aid your storyline. Also, when downloading these media files, think about downloading them into a specific directory on your computer so that it is much easier to find later.
Step 4. Import all of your media into iMovie (or whatever video editor you are using). If you are using iMovie simply click ‘File’ -> ‘Import’ -> ‘Movies…’. This will pull up a popup window where you can select the media you would like to import. The bottom half of this pop up window includes the import settings for this project. I would suggest you click the button labeled “Create a new Event”, title it, and import your video clips to that event. I also suggest you check the “Optimize Video” box or just leave the default setting. Now hit “Import”. It should take a few minutes to import all your clips, but once this is done you are ready to go.
Step 5. Using your event video bank in the bottom half of the screen
Select the regions of the clip that you would like to add, then simply drag them to the top left project window. The rest is basically up to you to edit the rest. From here, I will simply give the iMovie users some tips on how to get the most out of iMovie. If you would like add audio tracks from your iTunes library you can simply select the music icon directly to the right of the sound level bars. This will bring up a list of the songs within your iTunes library and you can drag and drop the songs wherever you would like in your video.
If you would like to add text to your video, click the “T” icon that is two spaces to the right of the music icon. As you can see in the bottom right hand corner of the screenshot of above, these are all different types of text styles. You can drag and drop any of them into the project window, and they can be layered on top of clips or alone by themselves. When you add text, you have the opportunity to change the background and font of the text.
If you would like to add transitions to your video, click the facing triangles icon that is to the right of the text icon. Similarly, you can drag and drop these transitions between the splitting of clips to create transitions between clips.
If you would like to change video/audio levels or add video/audio effects simply double click on clips in the project window. The clip inspector will then come up with multiple tabs labeled “Clip”, “Video”, and “Audio”. These tabs will allow you to do many different things, more general changes being made within the “Clip” tab and more specific changes within the “Video” and “Audio” tabs.
To watch your video you can either use the play button on the toolbar on left within the middle toolbar. This will simply play your video in the little box in the top right hand corner. If you would like to watch it in full screen, click the play button with the dark box surrounding it.
Step 6. Once your video is complete it is time to export it. To do this, from the menu click ‘Share’ -> ‘Export using QuickTime…’. Then name your video and choose where you would like to save it. Depending on the length of your video this will take some time to complete, but when it is finished you have your completed video as a viewable QuickTime video that can easily be uploaded to YouTube.
I hope this tutorial has helped. If you have any questions, regarding this assignment or the use of iMovie, feel free to comment on this post and I will do my best to get back to you with a response. See ya!
This week I created a mashup assignment called Video Game Cover Mashup. As a big fan of video games, I’ve always appreciated the artistic styling and designs that go into creating these games. I thought it would be a cool idea to mashup a few of the most iconic video game covers and create something almost entirely new.
I decided to complete this assignment myself combining two video games called Grand Theft Auto V and Mortal Kombat. Initially, I didn’t think completing this assignment on my own would be that difficult. But, after getting the idea in my head, I knew I had the follow through with it. I used the GTA5 theme as the base and added mortal combat characters into the side panelings to round out the image. This is the original GTA5 cover and these are a fewofthepictures I used from Mortal Kombat. In all, the concept isn’t the most difficult but for me it was very time consuming and I think worthy of 4 Stars.
Tutorial:
1. I started out with the original GTA5 cover in Pixlr.
2. I then erased the pictures that I intended to replace.
3. I substituted these pictures using copy and paste then changed the title to match my intention.
In the end, I was very happy with my end result and I think it was a worthy submission to the assignment bank. I think video game covers are one of the most mashable pieces of content and can create some really cool looking designs.
This assignment was funny, I enjoyed making it so much I did my tutorial on it. You can see my tutorial here. I decided to combine the three favorites teams of my household; the Redskins, the Bears, and the Capitals. You can see my process in my tutorial.
This post is dedicated to my completion of the mashup assignment The Contest Nobody Could Win (Video-Mashup Edition). The idea of this assignment was to take 2 second or less clips and compile them into a video of clips from your favorite movies. The video should be short, around 20 seconds, and can include music if desired. To start on this assignment, I needed to decide what movies I wanted to use for this. I have so many movies that I consider my favorites that it took me a while to decide. The films I landed on were The Change-Up,Star Wars Episode I,Signs, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Ghostbusters, and Godzilla. After this, I had to decide the clips I wanted to use. To do this, I wanted to download some of the better clips from the movies. At the same time, I wanted clips with very good quality, which was hard for some of these movies considering how old they are. I ended up finding a very solid set of clips on YouTube, and I downloaded them using ClipConverter.
From here, I used iMovie to create my video. I uploaded all the video clips I downloaded into iMovie. From here I selected and cut the clips from the scenes that I wanted to use. The only requirement within this was that the clips had to be, at maximum, 2 seconds. I then needed to mute all the clips so that I could add music and the noise from the clips would not interfere. The song I decided to add to this video was Back in Black by AC/DC. I chose this song because the tempo fits the quick transition of clips within the video. It also helps add an extra bad ass aspect to the video, in my opinion at least. But finally, here’s my video:
This assignment is worth a total of 2 stars.
Giving me a total of 5 stars for the week. I think I did a really good job on this assignment. Although it was a pretty simple one it captured some of the best scenes from these movies and applies good music at the same time. I hope everyone enjoyed and has had a great weekend. Til next time my friends.
For my second Mashup Assignment of the week, I decided to do the Techno Viking Music Video assignment. The premise behind the assignment was to take a music video and incorporate scenes from the Techno Viking video at certain points of the song. The music video/song that I chose to mashup was Eminem’s Rap God. The song is rather fast-paced at certain points throughout, which allowed Techno Viking to make near-seamless appearances throughout. Eminem is one of my favorite rappers, and as I had just recently watched the music video for Rap God I knew that it would make for a good mashup with Techno Viking. I had never heard of Techno Viking before stumbling across this assignment, but after watching the original video I was enthralled by his enthusiasm and knew that I wanted to do this mashup assignment.
To begin, I downloaded both the music video as well as the Techno Viking video from Youtube via Savefrom.net. The music video in particular took a VERY long time to download is it took up a considerable amount of memory. When both of the clips were finally downloaded, I imported them into Adobe Premiere Elements 13.
The first bit of editing that needed to be done was the cutting out the parts of the Techno Viking clip that didn’t feature any actual dancing. After this was done, I had two small clips that I could repeat interchangeably throughout the duration of the music video. The music video clip was left completely unchanged throughout the editing process. To interject the Techno Viking scenes, I simply layered the clips on top of the music video. Unfortunately I had to stretch the clip to cover the entire video, which resulted in lower resolution clips. There was also no way to remove the watermark from the video as I was using the trial version of Adobe Premiere Elements. Here is how my work space looked after editing:
I synced the Techno Viking clips as closely as possible with the drops of the verses throughout the song. Due to the editing style of the original video, the interjection of my clips looked a lot more natural than I thought it would at first, and created a product that I am overall very happy with. Here is my finished product. Just as a warning, this video is not censored, and contains strong and possibly offensive language.
