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Everyone has a superpower that they’d love to have. Show yours in a mashup by editing at least two photos together to show how you’d yours in an everyday situation. (4 Stars) http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/superhuman-in-everyday-life/ The Work Itself: Behind the Work: This Assignment what pretty straight forward. What super power would I want? Express that super power…
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My first mashup assignment this week was worth 5 stars. The name of the assignment says it all! It was a really fun assignment to do. The first thing I had to do was find an iPhone that had that capability. Luckily, my boyfriend’s phone does, and he let me use it. The assignment didn’t specify how long the video had to be, so I just did the length of the song. The song I chose was Hallelujah by Pentatonix. I chose this sing because I felt that it was slow enough for the camera to better pick up my mouth movements. Another thing that was a little difficult was that the phone only does 30 second recordings at a time. So, I had to keep pausing the song to start another recording. That’s why it sounds a little choppy. One thing that confused me about the assignment was that it said create yourself but then it had animoji in the title and a fox as the example picture. I decided to switch it up a little. This week is all about mashups and remixes anyway! Here is my video I uploaded to YouTube.
I did my best to make the character look like me. I really like how the hair moves too. The animation was really well done. I just wish the camera could pick up on some of the more tiny mouth movements.
To make this video, I used my boyfriend’s phone to record nine 30 second clips. I then sent them to myself and compiled them all in iMovie. I then uploaded the video to YouTube.
One of this week’s mashup assignments tasked me to take a dramatic closeup of anyone’s face and superimpose an unrelated landscape or scene over the face.
I’m going to be honest with you all…when I first read this assignment description, I immediately decided I wasn’t going to do it. Photoshop and photo editing is probably one of the things that I feel most uncomfortable about. And since this assignment was photoshop heavy, I decided against trying it.
However, I couldn’t help but look at past class examples which were so entertaining and funny, I really wanted to make my own. So, instead of giving into my lack of confidence, I decided to go for it and try this assignment!
The first part of this assignment was to come up with the two images to use. I have been super stressed out lately, and to cheer me up my mom has been sending me the Kim Kardashian crying meltdown memes. I decided that because I have seen so much of her meme face that I wanted to use it for part of this assignment. But I still needed to come up with a second image…
As I was driving back to m y house from class, I saw the inspiration for my ‘landscape’ photo in the shape of two golden arches.
And now, a quick story:
We have all been there…
You are doing homeowrk or watching a movie late at night and suddenly a craving hits you. You want ice cream. But not just any ice cream… you want the creamiest soft serve ice cream with swirls of oreo or m&ms mixed in. And you want it for a price that wont bust your budget.
So what do you do? You head to McDonalds to get a McFlurry!
Only one small issue….THE MCFLURRY MACHINES ARE ALWAYS BROKEN!!!
A broken McFlurry machine is an appropriate landscape for a Kim K meltdown in my opinion, so I decided that these two images would be perfect for this assignment!
And here it is…
While I was very nervous to complete this assignment, it was actually a lot easier than I expected. I think the main concern I had for this task was that I didn’t have access to a photo editing software I felt comfortable using. When I have to edit photos, I usually use Adobe Photoshop. However, my laptop for some reason has decided it no longer likes Photoshop and wont open it (unrelated but if anyone is a photoshop/HP wizard hit me up I could use some help…).
Luckily, some former classmates who had completed this assignment previously had some great ideas of places where I can edit photos!
That’s how I discovered Pixlr.com!
If anyone has trouble editing photos, I HIGHLY recommend Pixlr. Pixlr is a free website where you can easily upload and edit multiple images at a time. Using Pixlr, I uploaded the three images I needed (Kim K crying, a McFlurry machine, and an out of order sign) and begun editing them. Using the layers function, I overlapped the Kim K crying and out of order images and cut them using a lasso tool. Once they were cut out, I was able to move them on the original photo so that it looked like one photo!
I am really happy I decided to do this assignment. It was a lot of fun and honestly opened my eyes to a new photo editing site that is really easy to use, which I can see being helpful to have in the future.
Have you ever noticed how different live music sounds compared to the album version?
Most people assume that recorded version of music sounds ‘better’ due to the ability of editing. However I ma someone who firmly believes that live music will always be better than recorded, and one of this week’s assignments gave me the chance to prove it!
One of this week’s 3 1/2 star mashup assignments tasked me with finding a live version of a song by the original artist and then mixing it together with the recorded version of the same song in attempts to highlight the sections that sound the most different in the live version.
The song that I decided to use to complete this assignment was actually a song I used for another assignment that tasked me to create a graphic based on powerful song lyrics. “Praying” by Kesha is one of the most soulful songs I have ever heard in my entire life and Kesha is an amazing singer. The lyrics of this song are so powerful and emotional that I felt it would be the perfect song to switch back and fourth between the live and recorded version to see how the emotion hat the song carries changes based on whether or not it was recorded or sung live… and to also prove to everyone how live music is always better than recorded.
The first step to completing this assignment was to download the live and recorded version of the song from YouTube to an mp3 file. Once the two songs were downloaded, I then imported them to Audacity where I was able to trim and combine the audio to flow into one song. Its been a couple of weeks since I have used audacity so this assignment was a great refresher for me!
Once I was content with all the switches, I exported the audio file and embedded it below!
The live version of the song in my ‘switch’ is from Kesha’s performance at the Grammy’s. this performance gained a lot of attention as Kesha invited powerhouse female singers to stand on stage and sing the song with her. ‘Praying’ is all about Kesha’s experiences with sexual assault and abuse, and the fact that she invited a group of females up on stage to sing with her I think was beautiful and really helped carry the emotion in this song.
I think that the main noticeable difference is the raw emotion that comes across in the live and recorded version. Listening to the two versions, I think its pretty clear that Kesha sounds ‘better’ in the recorded version because of all the editing. However, I think that the raw emotion is so much stronger in the live version, which brings me back to proving to you all why live music is better than recorded music. Live music may not necessarily sound better, but the ability to listen and experience live versions of music carries such a different and in my opinion evokes a much stronger emotional response to the song you are hearing. I think that is evident in the switches between the live and recorded version of this song.
Music, like most people, is a love of mine. I am always looking for songs that make me feel things and have the most amazing lyrics possible. Whether you listen to it live or the recorded version, there is no denying the powerful impact a song like ‘Praying” has on the audience. And while I still assert that live music is always better than the recorded version, I enjoyed the chance this assignment gave me to experiment with my love of music and mashup two versions of the same song to see how music can change based on how one hears it.
This week is all about mashups and remixes. Prior to this week I never really knew the difference between the two and typically linked them together. Since reading our weekly assignment post I now know the difference between a mashup and a remix.
The assignment page stated that a remix is usually a creative edit of one form of media. While a mashup refers to the mixing of media/content of from disparate places. Going into the weeks assignments I was glad I finally had a solid understanding of the two.
Granted I could certainly confuse myself later…
That being said this week we’re assigned 10 stars of mashup assignments from the assignment bank. So with that I wanted to start the week off by starting my mashup assignments. I decided to start with a 5 star assignment called Storytelling Through Text. This assignment asked that…
Chances are you’ve probably seen those creepy ads on YouTube which tells horror stories through text. Now it’s your turn to tell a story. It can be horror, comical, or serious… it is up to you! Grab a friend (or two phones and text yourself back and forth) and text each other to tell a story. Before you start texting, make sure to turn on the camera so you can record the story or download an app to record your screen.
I felt this would be a fun and creative assignment to do, similarly I always liked the ads that relied on text to tell a story. This felt like a great opportunity to put my mashup skills to the test. Likewise I wanted to connect this particular assignment to the secret agent character I created and have built upon this semester.
I completed this assignment by simply using my phone and my friends phone. All I had to do was just hit the screen recording button on my iPhone and from there I proceeded to send text messages back and forth from my friends phone to my phone to tell a story. Once I finished the text story I stopped the recording and the video saved to my camera roll. From there I sent the video to my camera and imported it to iMovie. This allowed me to create it as a movie and ultimately speed up the video a bit so it wasn’t too long and easier to watch. When it imported fully I just sped up the video x2 and proceeded to save and upload it to youtube.
The story I told within my texts was one that involved my character princess/secret agent Juliet Stones. Essentially I staged it so that her brother Harrison who is a fellow agent texted her needing help. From there the story consisted of Harrison and Juliet going back and forth about what had happened to him and what is to come. I don’t want to spoil it for you so take a look below to see what happens!
I was inspired to tell a story that was intriguing, but wasn’t too drawn out and confusing to follow. Ultimately the screen recording ended up being 8 minutes, but with speeding it up my video turned out to be 4 minutes. This I felt was the perfect length and captured a perfect story. This was a super fun assignment and I certainly recommend it to anyone who is looking for a good mash up assignment to do. Likewise it was a fairly easy process to put together. The one thing I recommend is that you plan out what you want to say in your texts ahead of time, so you aren’t wasting time while recording trying to come up with content.
I essentially planned a script which really helped the recording process and made the text exchange so much easier. I am so glad I did this, it also allowed for me to really put together a concise, but exciting story. Hope you all like it!
Hey there everyone! Today, I decided to get an early jump on week 12. This week, we have been tasked with the responsibility of completing mashup assignments, creating tutorials, and most of all, understanding the process involved in mashing up and remixing artistic mediums. The five star assignment that I chose to do to start this out, was the storytelling through text assignment.
I began this process by thinking back on all of the text story videos I’ve watched in the past. I usually ignore them when I see them on social media now, but when they first came out, I watched a few- because they intrigued me. I would venture to say that 90% of the ones that I’ve seen before are centered around a spooky backstory, or some horror theme. In order to make mine different and unique, I made mine play into our spy theme, and it also matches up with my past works, playing into how fed up my character Rich is with spy activities as a whole. I think his short, unbothered texts to the villain shows where he’s coming from, as if he could care less about the situation. The villain that I had in mind while creating this was not a good one, as in, they were bad at being a villain. Much like Dr. Doofenshmirks from Phineas and Ferb. I tried to add music over the background of the video in post, but none of the default songs in iMovie matched the theme, and I didn’t want to get copyrighted by YouTube before the end of the week and end up having to remake it.
If you’d like to create one of your own, simply do a screen recording, and throw it into iMovie, fast forward it to 2x speed, export it, re-import it, and make it go at something like 1.5 speed. Export it once more and repeat until you have all of the pieces you need to blend them into a story. Without further adieu, here’s my bad villain text story. I hope you enjoy.
Find any song and mash up a video of some animals dancing. Try to get the animals to move to the beat.
BEHIND THE SCENES
I chose this assignment from the assignment bank because I love animals! Specifically, I looove cats. This big juicy boy has been on my mind for a while, and recently a song has been tickling my funny-bone a lot. I thought what could be better than combining the two together?
You may argue that this doesn’t count as a dance. I politely disagree. Just look at that strut! The masterclass of confidence and pride that comes with those steps…that’s better than a dance by far!
STEPS TO SUCCESS
— Redownload iMovie
— Download the video I needed, as well as the song.
— Cut the video and music down to a point where it seems natural and brisk.
— Process the video and save it as an MP4
— Share on Youtube.
And that’s about it! This project was quick and easy, relatively painless too! It seems like a nice time , and it is! I’d have fun doing it again. Until next time!
Create a trailer out of movie clips, tv show excerpts, news sources, viral videos, or even other trailers. Consider which pieces you are combining and what the new message is. Here is a template for a movie trailer green screen intro. Have fun!!
For this assignment, I chose to make a new trailer for Avengers: Age of Ultron. I know the movie is a few years old, but it worked too well with the Pinocchio trailer.
The audio in the trailer is from the original Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer, and I thought that it would be funny to play the Pinocchio trailer with the audio. Ultron is singing and referencing Pinocchio throughout the trailer, so I just added the wooden puppet. I made this trailer in iMovie using only the trailers for Pinocchio and Avengers.
The message for the trailer is no longer just about Pinocchio. Now, it’s about Pinocchio taking over the world, and the Avengers are trying to stop him.
It was really fun making this video. The hardest part about editing was trying to align the audio well with the video. There was significantly more audio from the trailer with the Avengers versus Pinocchio, so I did cut a lot of audio out. Most of the audio I cut was just music or Ultron talking. I did cut a short conversation between Iron Man and Black Widow out of the video also.
Since I wanted the trailer to mainly focus on Pinocchio, I did cut out some clips of just Jiminy Cricket. There were some points in the trailer where he was talking, but it did not fit with the audio for the Avengers, so his scenes did not make it in the final cut.
Take the original version of a song and mix it with a cover that is drastically different. This will allow you to truly see the difference in the two songs in real time. It could be a slow version of the song and then a faster paced version of the song. It is cool to see how different artist’s create different versions of the same song. An example would be to mix Michael Jackson’s song ‘Smooth Criminal’ with Alien Ant Farm’s version of the song. The chorus is a perfect example since it would go from the softer more pop version of Jackson’s to the hard guitar version of AAF.
Assignment Bank- Audio Assignments
For this assignment, I decided to merge the Beatles song “Hey Jude” and its cover by Across the Universe. It was kind of hard to do this, but it was really fun. I love both versions of the song, and it was cool to hear them back to back. The original song by the Beatles is a lot longer than the cover, so I did end up having to cut it off at the end.
I did end up having to change the pitch of the voices in order to post it on SoundCloud. The song sounds a little silly with their high pitched voices, but you can still hear the differences between the original song and the cover. I had a hard time using Audacity when making this mashup of songs. I think I still need to get the hang of the application, but I knew my way around enough to make this!
Check out my annoying sounds! This 1-star assignment was short but interesting. Mostly because I got to think about the most annoying sounds that bother me.
I used FreeSounds.org to gather my annoying sounds. I used a baby crying, a squeeky noise, a bunch of birds chirping and a goose honk. I then placed them into GarageBand and mashed them all together….it sounds wonderful.. Then uploaded to Soundcloud! I would have to say this is the worst soundcloud upload ever!
