Remember when they used to have movie trailers on the radio? Me neither, but there are examples at the Drive-In of the Damned Radio Spot Archive (https://archive.org/details/driveinofthedamned). Since NASA graced us with its Galaxy of Horrors(https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/alien-worlds/galaxy-of-horrors/) poster series, it is up to us to create audio trailers to go with them. Freesound(https://freesound.org/) and creative commons music(https://www.reddit.com/r/podcasting/comments/dleuzl/big_list_of_creative_commonsroyalty_free_music/) are your friends.
Prompt: Pick a song from any genre such as, rock, pop, latin music, electronica, etc. and then find another version of that song in a DIFFERENT genre. Once you find the song in a different genre post the original and the remake and explain which you like better and why. Be creative and have fun!
One thing about me is that I am extremely musical. At any given point in my day, a song is in my mind. I often randomly break out into song as if my life is a musical or I’m part of a flash mob. People around me may not always get the song reference because my musical tastes are quite eclectic. Overall though, I’m partial to R&B and soul music. One genre of music that I don’t enjoy is country. I think I have maybe five country songs total on my playlist, and those have been mixed with a little hip hop or R&B to be more acceptable to my ears.
For my digital studies blog, I like to complete assignments that connect to me as a person. It can sometimes be difficult to tell a story about my life and have it align with whatever is required. This time it was incredibly difficult. The songs I wanted to choose were not songs commonly made in other genres. At least, not yet. I was surprised because I thought nearly every R&B song had a country version out there.
And now….a warning. These songs have adult themes and strong imagery. Not recommended for anyone under age 18.
ADULT CONTENT WARNING!!!!
For this assignment, I chose the song Earth Is Ghetto by Aliah Sheffield. Its genre is R&B/soul. I found this song earlier this year and really connected with it. I often feel like I don’t belong on this planet or like the people here are crazy. Often our systems, politics, laws, and daily life requirements make no sense. And after all the civil rights uproar during the COVID pandemic, I feel even less comfortable in this place. This song touches something deep in my core and expresses thoughts that are difficult for me to say out loud to others. Just for fun, I chose a version with some funny TikTok videos in it to lighten the mood. That being said, the song is a serious one and I hope you will focus on the message.
It was difficult to find this song in a different genre. But, that happened to be the case with every song I chose prior to settling on this one. There were some club mixes, acoustic versions, and acapella versions, but overall, nothing to write home about. Ultimately, they were still in the R&B and soul genre. Then, I found this unusual rap version which expanded on the ideas in Aliah’s song.
WARNING!!!! This song is not good. The guy can’t sing. But, he did try.
I definitely prefer the original version. The rap version could be a real hit with a little work. Maybe if it was by someone who can sing on key, and if the lyrics were refined. I can’t tell if the differing keys was a creative choice or if it was accidental. The original is far better and I look forward to hearing other genre’s remake the song as it gains popularity in other communities. I do love it that both songs have a unified message about corruption, civil rights, racist systems, and mistreatment of minorities and the poor. Maybe the second song had such musical dissonance as a metaphor for the actual lived dissonance of so many people in the world.
I thought of this song when I was reading The Kekulé Problem the other day. In it, McCarthy recalls,
I suggested once in conversation at the Santa Fe Institute that language had acted very much like a parasitic invasion and David Krakauer—our president—said that the same idea had occurred to him. Which pleased me a good deal because David is very smart.
Allegedly, the virus quote originated in William Burroughs’ The Ticket That Exploded, although I could not locate the verbiage in a search of the text. McCarthy doesn’t deal with Burroughs though. He’s rather discussing relationships between language and the subconscious, and language and humanity.
…once you have language everything else follows pretty quickly. The simple understanding that one thing can be another thing is at the root of all things of our doing.
The Open Culture essay on The Kekulé Problem quotes GK Chesterton: “Art is the signature of man.” Art, like language, is symbolic representation and metaphor. One thing being another. I’d also say it’s a mirror, in that what we see in it is determined by what we bring to it, and so it shows us ourselves.
I read Kekulé hoping it would help me grapple with The Passenger. The jacket flap explains it as a “novel of morality and science, the legacy of sin, and the madness that is human consciousness.” On the surface, it appears to be two interleaved tales, one of a young woman’s hallucinations and suicide, and one of her brother working as a salvage diver in New Orleans. But it’s something more as well. There’s a scene at a funeral where the protagonist muses on the scientists who built the bomb and the aesthetics of horror, with this sentence:
I just had to make a triple troll quote out of that. #MakeArtDammit! I attributed it to Hemingway and used a photo of Ellroy, contrasting the quote to their deceptively simple prose and economy of language.
Anderson’s song connects back to the book with serendipitous lyrics:
Paradise
Is exactly like
Where you are right now
Only much much (It’s a shipwreck,)
Better. (It’s a job.)
The job involves a shipwreck and a sunken plane. I don’t think paradise enters into it, although it appears to be what they like doing. Finding these connections is something I like doing. And it gives me impetus to blog a bit, and maybe get that book club thing going with Jim again.
Yikes, I had to dig deep in the archives to find the last time I did a DS106 Assignment. I would like to think there is one in there about making an excuse for not doing them.
And I had to read his post (very true to DS106 of documenting the back story) which introduces the very fun concept of the Walk of Life Project. And also in good tradition, Paul produced a few movie endings edited to end with the Dire Straits song. Then in DS106 tradition, it was added as an assignment.
So since I had this previous bent for Westerns, I reached for the Sergio Leone epic The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly which rings even more spaghetti like as Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo so I Google Translated a suffix of “il cammino della vita”:
As expected, YouTube slapped a copyright claim but so far says its allowed to stay on the site
Like Paul wrote in his post, one might ponder the placement of the Walk of Life Music. I went for fading out Tuco’s scream (and drastically lowering the movie soundtrack). It might hit the beats for the Ugly, Bad, Good signage, but to me it works… cause I made it.
The thing about DS106 stuff is it need not be perfect, especially as a free roaming open participant. This was an iMovie quickie edit. I probably did not go for the best clip on searching for the end sequence, I got one of those MovieClips ones where the superimpose a logo and other cruft at the end. But I used my trick of importing a black solid rectangle image, putting it in the top video track, and using the Picture in Picture mode to create a shape that blocked out the logo.
Then it was a matter of getting The Dire Straits song as an audio file, cutting it before the singing came in, and a bit of audio level futzing to get a smooth entrance and exit.
I put the command line YouTube download youtube-dl to work, it just feels so geeky right to do this. For the video, I used:
youtube-dl -f best https://youtu.be/o36m-2TPwck
For nabbing the Dire Straits audio, I use the rick of getting all the available file formats
This returns all of the video/audio files/formats available, look for the m4a one and make note of the code column (it usually seems to be 140, I can just try guessing). This then becomes par of the command to get the audio file of the Knopfler crew:
The file formats youtube-dl detects foe a given video
And that is how I got the media needed to send th 3 gents on a Walk of Life remix.
That’s it, and the for ds106 style, I remember to use my ds106 tag which tells the mother site I am finally blogging and this post should be syndicated, and as well, for the Do the Walk of Life assignment, I add two more tags, VideoAssignments and VideoAssignments2810 which identify first that this is an assignment bank response — that’s the genius of the syndication created originally by Martha Burtis, the assignment bank actually gets feeds from the main DS106 site, including http://ds106.us/category/VideoAssignments/feed/ so it grabs posts based on the first tag, and the second tag associates it with the assignment.
It’s rather impressive, eh, that this RSS feed syndication system developed around 2011 still works like a champ. I have a future post about the condition of the Syndication Bus in 2022.
Featured Image:Still experimenting with using Openverse within WordPress, not much goodness for “walk life” “dire straits” so the classic Monument Valley scenery works for “western movie” – no spaghetti in sight!
Yikes, I had to dig deep in the archives to find the last time I did a DS106 Assignment. I would like to think there is one in there about making an excuse for not doing them.
And I had to read his post (very true to DS106 of documenting the back story) which introduces the very fun concept of the Walk of Life Project. And also in good tradition, Paul produced a few movie endings edited to end with the Dire Straits song. Then in DS106 tradition, it was added as an assignment.
So since I had this previous bent for Westerns, I reached for the Sergio Leone epic The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly which rings even more spaghetti like as Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo so I Google Translated a suffix of “il cammino della vita”:
As expected, YouTube slapped a copyright claim but so far says its allowed to stay on the site
Like Paul wrote in his post, one might ponder the placement of the Walk of Life Music. I went for fading out Tuco’s scream (and drastically lowering the movie soundtrack). It might hit the beats for the Ugly, Bad, Good signage, but to me it works… cause I made it.
The thing about DS106 stuff is it need not be perfect, especially as a free roaming open participant. This was an iMovie quickie edit. I probably did not go for the best clip on searching for the end sequence, I got one of those MovieClips ones where the superimpose a logo and other cruft at the end. But I used my trick of importing a black solid rectangle image, putting it in the top video track, and using the Picture in Picture mode to create a shape that blocked out the logo.
Then it was a matter of getting The Dire Straits song as an audio file, cutting it before the singing came in, and a bit of audio level futzing to get a smooth entrance and exit.
I put the command line YouTube download youtube-dl to work, it just feels so geeky right to do this. For the video, I used:
youtube-dl -f best https://youtu.be/o36m-2TPwck
For nabbing the Dire Straits audio, I use the rick of getting all the available file formats
This returns all of the video/audio files/formats available, look for the m4a one and make note of the code column (it usually seems to be 140, I can just try guessing). This then becomes par of the command to get the audio file of the Knopfler crew:
The file formats youtube-dl detects foe a given video
And that is how I got the media needed to send th 3 gents on a Walk of Life remix.
That’s it, and the for ds106 style, I remember to use my ds106 tag which tells the mother site I am finally blogging and this post should be syndicated, and as well, for the Do the Walk of Life assignment, I add two more tags, VideoAssignments and VideoAssignments2810 which identify first that this is an assignment bank response — that’s the genius of the syndication created originally by Martha Burtis, the assignment bank actually gets feeds from the main DS106 site, including http://ds106.us/category/VideoAssignments/feed/ so it grabs posts based on the first tag, and the second tag associates it with the assignment.
It’s rather impressive, eh, that this RSS feed syndication system developed around 2011 still works like a champ. I have a future post about the condition of the Syndication Bus in 2022.
Featured Image:Still experimenting with using Openverse within WordPress, not much goodness for “walk life” “dire straits” so the classic Monument Valley scenery works for “western movie” – no spaghetti in sight!
Step 1: Find the photo you want to use for the background of the wedding invitation. For this one my wedding is going to be at Vaughan House in Forest, Virginia. It’s going to be on our 5th anniversary of meeting, so we can use those detail to incorporate.
Step 2: Open Canva at canva.com, in the search bar looking for “wedding invitations” and select the template you want to start with. Text, fonts, and photos are able to be edited, but if there is one that will save you time, start there!
Step 3: Use the upload feature on the right hand side to insert a background, if you’d like. If not! Get to editing. If you click on the text, you can change size and position. If you double click, you can edit the text, font, color and text size.
Step 4: More customization! In light of me not wanting a lot of people to show up to my wedding I am sending out my RSVP’s with less than a month until our wedding day. Will people be upset? Absolutely. Have I been dropping subtle hints that it is our 5 year anniversary? Yes.
Step 5: Time to print! JK… we are saving the planet and trees. Invitations are going to be sent via email, text, FB messenger etc… for most people, we’ll probably still print out like 10. And tadaa! Done.
EHem I appreciate you guys as class members, but please do not come.
Last week, I detailed the technology of how I produced my movie and it was pretty much the same but much more efficient this time around. Just to recap, I used CloudConvert after downloading everything using the Firefox browser from YouTube, getting video in MP4 and audio on MP3. The audio I recorded from my phone in MP3 and emailed it to myself then made any adjustments on Audacity. Then I importing all files as needed into OpenShot, building first the basic songs, then adding the voice-over narration, then the background sound on a different track to the narration. Then I created the Title file and Credit file on PowerPoint and exported them as jpg to import into OpenShot.
This week, it’s really more about the creative process. I am surprised that I started out thinking I’d be doing something like a an old newsreel format from VideoAssignment 153 “News on the March.” I still call it my inspiration but it morphed way beyond that assignment. My 10+ minute movie, “Up She Goes, Over a Century,” looks at the song “Come Josephine, In My Flying Machine” in its three permutations since it was created in 1910. The most recent incarnations were in the movie Titanic, produced in 1997.
My original concept had been to look at five different aviation songs from the early 1900s, all different genres, and show how America was all a-buzz with flight, singing songs in their parlors at their upright pianos. When I got to “Josephine,” everything changed to one song with its three versions, mostly because I thought it would hold my audience’s attention because of the Titanic version being more current, and it showcased Leo DiCaprio and Kate Winslett.
With that concept change, I decided to use two videos from the Titanic movie to capture my audience’s attention and because the Titanic ocean liner disaster was in 1912, just a year after the original song was recorded. The first video is the bow shot where DiCaprio has Winslett blindfolded until she is on the forward bow rails, when she opens her eyes and he shares with her the sensation of flying. Then he whispers the song “Come, Josephine” to her (and he goes in for the kiss!). The second scene is when Winslett is hallucinating and she is singing the same song but more in a dream state so it begins slower, then changes to a more upbeat rhythm. The next clip is the original tune sung by Ada Jones and Bill Murray in 1911, with a video that has some great flying, then the last video that is very upbeat and patriotic done by Spike Jones in 1942. Once I had the major pieces in the right location, I cut them as much as possible for time. I still kept with a solid story line using the narratives for the introduction and transitions between clips. Then I chose background sound of an old airplane flying as if I’m outside with vintage aircraft flying overhead. The last thing I did was to decide on the name of the piece (the title) and compile the credits.
What I didn’t get out of this process: I still need to learn how to write over video–I wanted to do that for this title but instead used PowerPoint to create both the title and the credits. It’s fine, but I think I overused the sheet music image because it’s all I had. I really wanted to find video of old planes flying and have the title and rolling credits in the foreground of the video. I also would like to learn how to fade in and out of scenes for both the video and audio–the cuts are too abrupt as they are. So, there are still more big muscle movements to figure out.
The first motivational poster I made was very snarky and sarcastic. I love it. Looking back on it, however, it looks more like a meme than a poster. It might have something to do with the fact that I made it using a meme generator site. So for my second attempt, I used Canva.
The first poster I made is also my least favorite. I wanted to make a poster pointing out that human beings are luckier than some creatures on this planet. Turns out, pandas are pretty dumb. Might be why they make for such cute videos and photos. Compared to the other posters I made, this one looks the most “handmade”.
If you ever feel stupid, just remember, you could be stupider
My second poster speaks to me A LOT. I 100% believe that a good nap can make you feel mentally and physically better. Sometimes, you just need to put everything aside and take a nap! I really like this one because it is all graphics and it just pleases me aesthetically.
We’ve all felt like this dog before
My final poster is my favorite, even if it really isn’t a motivational poster. This would be the perfect greeting card. The idea behind this poster was that reading a really interesting and wholesome fact would brighten one’s mood and potentially make their day.
This pig is so freaking cute!
Overall, I really love these new posters and they are an excellent improvement from the original.
Ok, this may seem random and like a waste, but I promise it’s not. Our radio show has more characters than we have actors, so I wanted to try my hand at editing voices so they sound like two different people before offering this up as something we could do. I think it worked out pretty well, although there is a little distortion and I would have to keep playing with it to get it perfect.
The quote is from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien. It’s the point where pretty much all hope is lost and Gandalf, the wizard mentor character who has already died once, and Pippin, the comic relief who’s not much more than a child, are coming to terms with the fact that they were not going to get out of the coming battle alive. It’s a fairly sweet moment between two characters who for the rest of the story have not gotten along.
If you know the lore (and I mean REALLY know the lore, this stuff isn’t easy to find) you’ll know that the afterlife Gandalf is describing is the afterlife that he saw when he died and where he expects to return when he dies again. This is because he is a Maia, a demigod of that world. He is immortal, he can only go between what I’m calling the astral plane and the real world. Pippin is a hobbit; he’s mortal. He won’t see the afterlife Gandalf is describing. (Tolkien was Catholic so Pippin and all the other mortal characters go to judgement.) Gandalf likely knew that, but couldn’t think of anything else to say to the hobbit they both thought was about to die. I tried to capture that bittersweetness in the music, a stock piece I found a long time ago called “Soft Horror Piano Drone.” I didn’t think it was particularly horrific, I thought it was more sad and maybe threatening or foreboding than scary.
I put the music in Audacity, where I already had my voices. I recorded Pippin’s track first, and then Gandalf’s. For Pippin’s voice, I pitched it up a bit and sped it up some, as well as increasing the bass a little (to make it sound more masculine) and increasing the treble a lot (to make it sound smaller). I also did an accent to differentiate him better. It’s terrible but I’m calling it a Shire accent. For Gandalf’s, I pitched it down significantly, sped it up a little so it sounded more natural and increased the bass to make it more masculine. I also added a slight echo to make him sound a little more ethereal. Then I played with the pauses so it sounded right with the music. That put me at about 20 seconds, so I cut the music down (it’s a two-and-something minute piece) and had it fade out. I ended up with a pretty neat effect, I think. They definitely don’t sound like the same person recording it back to back. If I were to use this again, I don’t think I would make the differentiation quite as dramatic, less is more I think. At least in this case.
(This is a folk song written in the 1800s that was recorded in 1922 and is now public domain. However, since it is a song that already exists, Soundcloud may flag it anyway. If it gets taken down, leave a comment and I’ll try to embed the file or something. Just so we’re all on the same page.)
The description: It’s been fifteen years since the virus began spreading. It’s been ten since the vaccines failed, and six since it mutated into a hyper-deadly, hyper-contagious variant that wiped out 97% of the population. You’re one of the last survivors on the planet. As you raid an abandoned house for supplies, you accidentally trigger a tripwire and the music starts playing. As you explore further, you find who set up the tripwire, at least what’s left of them: a skeleton on the floor of the bedroom, lying on a bloodstained carpet, the gun they used to take their own life still in their hand. You take the gun. You can’t afford to waste time and resources to mourn the dead. Not anymore.
The writeup: I have been thinking about apocalypses in relation to this song a lot recently, considering that was the long-form writing idea I came up with and I’m still planning to do something with it. The song is a folk song, so there are plenty of different versions of it. I originally tried to do this project with the Gene Autry version of the song titled “Red River Valley” because that one’s my favorite, but Soundcloud flagged it, so I used the version that’s old enough to be public domain instead. I honestly hate this version, but it gets the mood across. I like the juxtaposition of an upbeat song with the gruesome image of a suicide that was never found (honestly, one of the more grim images I could think of from an apocalypse).
I took the base recording and used Sony Vegas Movie Maker 15 to make the edits. I used the amplitude modulation to increase the wet out to 24 dB and lower the amplitude. I also had the low-pass start frequency set to 230 Hz. I then used the Track EQ feature. I honestly don’t know what it does exactly, but when I was playing around with it, I found that moving point 1 to (+15, 166) and 4 (-15, 169) came with a good effect.
