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Transformation Video
Step 1. Get your camera, phone camera, whatever!
Step 2. Find something that is going to transform (ex. the paper towel roll, the dirty clothes hamper, the amount of people coming into your class)
Step 3. Film it! Show the process from start to finish. You could take pictures and mash them together, or do a time lapse video!
Remixes/Mashups
Upon watching the videos, the one main thing I’m nervous about is remixing photos. I had a terrible time just trying to figure out how to trim pictures out of background scenes. I have no idea how I will manipulate them to get them into a different form of media. We shall see. That recut version of the Shining is absolutely fantastic. And the poem by Bukowski (one of my favorite writers) just makes me depressed that I don’t write more often. Despite being a dirty old man, Bukowski is a heck of a motivator.
Part 1 of Everything is a Remix – I love the Zeppelin explainer – knock-offs and covers being the legal way to rip someone off. Zeppelin did it illegally – shame that none of the people they stole music from had broad audiences – and were typically from a slightly different brand of music so it may not have been as obvious as if they had stole it from other rock groups.
Part 3 of Everything is a Remix – interesting to think that copying can be seen as an integral part of creating as opposed to a diversion from it. Im not sure I buy that, but I believe its true that you cant create in a vacuum. Inspiration from other great works is proof of that. Copy – Transform – Combine. Meaning nothing is truly original.
I watched both of these videos along with the Fair(ly) Use Tail including the Disney characters. My thinking on what a remix is is that it’s a more blatant form of utilizing others’ ideas than what has been employed in the past. There’s no doubt people steal – but a lot of times I believe people are simply inspired by other works, use them to generate their own ideas or creative motivation and creation. I think good remixes have to be clever enough products to justify the use of other people’s ideas. In other words, I’ll accept that a remix is worthwhile, if in combining previously created elements, it demonstrates new creativity. I think that’s the definition of a good remix anyway. A bad remix is anything that steals other people’s stuff for no interesting or worthwhile reason.
Audio
For examples, I watched Dont Tase me Bro (pretty lame – only inserted two clips and they dont even fit that well), Call Me Maybe/Star Wars (this one is excellent – yes its a little more formulaic, just inserting words – but it’s done well, in time and is creative in finding the clips – i love the part where they put in the subtitles over the alien talk). Scary Mary is the best of them – it shows true creativity, simply using existing clips as building blocks for an entirely new idea.
Remix
The idea of remixing the photo of Doctorow is an interesting challenge….
Admittedly, it’s not my strong suit. I used a site called http://apps.pixlr.com/o-matic to put the effects on the image, then messed with it on Microsoft Paint. Here it is:
I did the popcorn remix. Didnt take me as long as I thought it would. if there’s a way to shift the images so they slant or sit differently, I couldnt figure it out. It was enough for me to figure out how to upload video and lay it in. The laying in of video has become much easier after working with Audacity and Movie Maker. Here’s the final product.
As for the DS106 remix I was given the task of remixing the cover of an autobiography and inserting a random character (like Uncle Bob). I actually went as far as to download Adobe Photoshop to work on this assignment. I didn’t want to mess with the other person’s Flickr account, so I just snipped the image and used it as a basis for remixing that way. Here’s the original.
And here’s the remixed version. Its not awesome but at least I figured out how to blend a picture in and add some new text. The new remix version of this assignment is about what happens when the ghost of your Uncle John (I know it says Uncle Bob in the assignment but I made it Uncle John) is overshadowing your hopes and dreams.
Summary
I like remixes but they aren’t easy for me. I think with more experience – particularly with the still photograph software, it could really enjoyable. Its a challenge to me to take someone else’s work and change it and make it better. As I pointed out before, blatantly using someone else’s work as the basis for your own bothers me creatively. I understand to some it’s similar to using someone else as inspiration, but to me it’s very different. With inspiration, the actual artistic product is still your own.
For my third and final video assignment this week, I chose to make a video of my day (5 stars). The assignment was to take pictures and videos throughtout my day and then mash them together into a video with music and what not. Most of the aspects of my day I cannot share, but I was able to scrounge up a few pictures and videos to make the final result.
I used iMovie to mash all the pictures and videos together and then converted a youtube video with the song “One Headlight” by The Wallflowers into an mp3 file so I could put the background music into the video. Now that I’m familiar with iMovie it’s easier to make the videos.
This is for the Mash-Up Trailer video assignment. I made a trailer for Lost last week, so I thought I would try my hand at making one for a movie. I just picked up Interstellar on DVD so I thought that would be a really fun film for which I can make a trailer. Just so you know, it has a Massive number of spoilers, so you really shouldn’t watch it if you haven’t yet seen the movie. Nor should you read any further. I took shots from all over the movie, but focused the on scenes surrounding the planets they visit. Each scene had a quick rising tension, so I set up shots from each of them in parallel as they progressed. The music in the background is from the movie’s soundtrack, at the docking scene. I tried to line up the shots’ progression and cuts with the song’s progression, and I think it came out really well.
I chose Interstellar in relation to my noir character, Sardic, because the spacial anomalies in the film reminded me of how Sardic’s universe works. Enjoy!
This week, we must do 10 stars of assignments from the assignment bank….HOWEVER we can do 10 stars from any category, but the catch is that all 10 must relate to our character and be collaborated with someone else’s character. AND WE GET EXTRA POINTS IF WE ACTUALLY WORK WITH THE PERSON WE’RE COLLABORATING WITH.
So all of my assignments this week will be done with Kelsey & her main squeeze Stella Vaughn
The first assignment I did this week was with my girl Kelsey. Her character, Stella Vaughn, and my character, Blair Morgan have been up to no good since their latest appearance on Noir Not the Father.
We did the assignment entitled: Who Called? (4 stars).
The task was as follows:
Record you self making a phone call as if you were a character off of the wire. The phone call has to be to another character from the wire. You can even make it a three way or four way call. You phone call can even be a voicemail as if someone didn’t pick up. Customize it as much as you like! The phone call has to be at least 2 minutes.
Side note, we didn’t know what the wire was so we ignored that part. YOLO. We’re rebellious. Get at us.
We decided to have a conversation about something that we had done on Noir Not the Father (You can listen in on Thursday (tonight) to see what that is all about).
We came up with a lovely script, that really portrayed the lives of our beautiful characters. We then recorded it in 2 takes. The first we messed up right away, but the second time was solid. GO US. Then we downloaded sound and mashed them into the voice recording.
Kelsey OBVIOUSLY played Stella, while I played Blair. We are very close to our characters at this point in the semester, and it is awesome how much of a storyline we have built between them from the radio show.
Here are the sounds we downloaded.
Telephone Hanging Up
Phone Ringing
Dial Tone
Phone Buttons
We put everything together and it came out to be 1:59.78 and we decided that was close enough to 2 minutes. We rounded up. I’m a math major and I say that it is okay to round up.
Here is our final piece of work.
4 down, 6 to go!
I was part of a radio broadcast both in high school and college so I have some experience as far as being a DJ but not as much when it comes to producing a taped and scripted radio show. I noted that in the specs it says we should create a piece that’s equal to 5 minutes times the amount of people we have – 40 minutes is a long broadcast! Anyhow, I like the idea of perhaps exploring the idea of time travel (perhaps because I just saw the Stephen Hawking movie in which he speculates about the nature of time). That’s just an idea. It seems to be that radio interviews are the easiest to produce (and similar to what I do every day) while radio dramas are the most difficult simply because of the nature of scripting, the number of different people involved, along with the sound effects and sound elements that go along with it. However, if its a well-scripted suspense or adventure story (like the Sherlock Holmes Basil Rathbone radio shows linked through the Internet archives), the number and importance of sound effects is less, though the need for a strong script and good characters is much greater. In Rob Watson’s article , he describes the radio drama as an exercise in imagination – a theater-of-the-mind. It challenges us to use a very limited and simple set of tools to create our stories – just voice and other sounds. I found it interesting that he would then challenge us to go beyond the simple tools that we’ve been given and try to re-imagine how to create a radio drama. I suppose one way that modern radio drama could take advantage of new technology would be to use the kinds of effects that were never possible before – flange or echo effects – or ones that manipulate the voice to create a new kind of character or to instill mood or drama. In Ira Glass’s article , he also talks about simplification, but in this case, I vbelieve he is simply trying to save us from ourselves. I’ve seen it a million times at MSNBC, where new writers try to write in a way that makes them sound intelligent or uses big words and all it does is complicate when often is a simple story. The toughest thing to do sometimes can be to find a simple, conversational way to say something. In Ira’s article, he uses this same idea to encourage producers to find the human element of a story – in other words, the most relatable part. In the same way, our writing should be something that all of our listeners can easily understand.
Three audio assignments
Create bumper
Create commercial
Create foley sounds – from 1:31-2:00
This wasn’t too hard – interesting to see how so many of the sound effects are made. I was more comfortable making them myself then finding stuff to make the sounds. My son enjoyed watching this. For mine to line up, you have to start the video at 1:28.
https://soundcloud.com/jersey-murph/chaplin-lion-04
Ten stars worth of assignments
Soundboard conversation – 4 stars – AudioAssignments, AudioAssignments1544 (http://www.soundboard.com/register.aspx)
Can’t Get it out of my Head – 2 stars – AudioAssignments, AudioAssignments1526
Did the whistling thing – pretty easy to guess I think, but maybe that’s because it is, actually, stuck in my right now.
https://soundcloud.com/jersey-murph/song-stuck-in-my-head
Being a Music Producer – 3 1/2 stars – AudioAssignments, AudioAssignments1179 (975-MASHUP)
I had an interesting idea to mashup Rage Against the Machine and CCR but it hasn’t worked out – yet. Having trouble figuring out how to mute and adjust speeds while trading off tracks.
Teezee reference – 1 1/2 stars – AudioAssignments, AudioAssignments1117
I found a good Twilight Zone reference in Futurama. I downloaded it from youtube using the website, YouTube to MP3, then imported the download to Audacity, trimmed off the pieces I didn’t need, then uploaded it back to my desktop and then to soundcloud. Added a picture this time too.
https://soundcloud.com/jersey-murph/futurama-scary-door-short
For this assignment (worth 3.5 stars), I had to create a mashup of songs that told a story.
This song, entitled “The Only One Night Stand We’re Having Is From Ikea” (in typical Fall Out Boy fashion), tells the story of Ami‘s most common daydream: falling in love and settling down with one of her one night stands. Though she could never abandon her commitment-free life, she likes to imagine running away with some of the men she finds herself waking up with on Saturday mornings. This song is what plays in her head when she has these daydreams. I used Garageband to mix all of the songs.
Tracklist:
Mr. Brightside- The Killers
Migraine- Twenty One Pilots
Flawless (REMIX)- Beyoncé ft. Nicki Minaj
11th Dimension- Julian Casablancas
Born To Do- Everybody Else
Love At First Sight- The Brobecks
Shut it Down- Drake ft. The Dream
Retrograde- James Blake
Do You Wanna- The Kooks
Fuck You All The Time (Shlohmo Remix)- Jeremih
Fitzpleasure- Alt-J
Sleepyhead- Passion Pit
Wake Me Up- Ed Sheeran
Bourgeois- Phoenix
Leave Before the Lights Come On- Arctic Monkeys
Only Ones Who Know- Arctic Monkeys
She’s Long Gone- The Black Keys
Chicago- Sufjan Stevens
West Coast- Coconut Records
I’m Like A Lawyer With The Way I’m Always Getting You Off- Fall Out Boy
The song starts out with a typical day. Migraine is layered with the songs about daily routine to signify the repetitiveness. But then, in Born to Do, right when she “walks in with cut offs,” the migraine cuts off, leading into a lovely haze. This leads into the third verse of Shut it Down, which I feel carries a significant interpretation of a one night stand:
TL:DR- Drake expresses the conflicting feelings of falling in love with someone in a temporary situation. This situation transgresses as the night goes on, with the songs getting more and more blatantly sexual. “Sleepyhead” signifies falling asleep. “Wake Me Up” plays as “Bourgeois” builds, giving a rising feeling to represent the moment when everything is perfect as the sun rises. Then, tragedy hits as the romance ends abruptly: she leaves before the lights come on. She won’t stay in touch. He drives to Chicago to try and forget about her, but ends up romantically returning to the West Coast (Folami’s dream home) to be with her. It is implied that they get married because they end sitting in a honeymoon (thanks, Fall Out Boy).
The last assignment that I did this week was the Character Call. It said to make an audio that would be an attractant to a character. I chose to do one for my character Conway who is a police officer. I used to soundbible and audacity to mash up there audio files. I used a shotgun fire followed by a car crash and then a shotgun reloading. This will definitely bring Conway running to the action. This assignment was very pleasing and fun. The original assignment can be found here. It is worth 2 stars.
This is the dialogue mashup assignment worth 4 1/2 points.
This was another really fun one. I knew I wanted to do something with the “you talkin’ to me?” scene. It’s just too perfect for this sort of assignment. I love the awkward tension that builds throughout. Initially I really wanted to get a Joe Pesci character in there somewhere. I was looking for a way to bring in his crazy “how’m I funny?” monologue from Goodfellas, but the scene is a bit too hectic and specific to move it into another context with total ease. I still want to do something with that scene eventually. Anyway, Ben Stein’s droll professor from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off seemed the perfect sort of character to contrast with Travis Bickle. There are a few moments in particular that really play off of each other well, but I couldn’t find enough useful dialogue from Stein’s character to flesh it out much more. Still a funny piece!
Greatest Hits Storytelling (3 1/2 stars)
Many artists sing songs about similar things or that each tell similar stories. Find an artist like this and choose five of their songs that you can make into one story. Using Audacity or another audio edting software, edit five or more songs by one artist into a new story! Use at least 5 songs and make the new song at least 5 minutes long. I recommend not uploading it to SoundCloud as it will likely be taken down due to copyright infringement, but you can still put it up on your blog and Twitter. Have fun with it!
Story Behind the Story
This assignment was difficult to say the least. I worked with so many different artists trying to find ones where five of their songs would flow perfectly together…I gave up on that dream shortly after. Eventually, I just focused on the new story aspect of the assignment. I had some friends and roommates throwing out different artists to use and finally I settled on Ed Sheeran (which I have no become unhealthily obsessed with). I found 5 of his songs that I liked and they actually created a nice story plot.
Sequence:
“Sing”: this was the flirty stage of the relationship, not quite dating but developing feelings
“Thinking out loud”: Where they finally fall in love and it’s perfection
“Don’t”: Where the girl cheats of poor Ed and he is just a little touchy about it
“Give me Love”: He is in the mourning stage
“Lego House”: He has moved on and can appreciate love now
The most challenging part was finding which parts of the song I wanted to use or which parts sounded decent with one another. I ended up cutting and deleting each song numerous times. I even had a friend, Sepehr Sobhani, work with me and give me advice on what to do. Although at times I had ABSOLUTELY no idea what he was talking about.
I did have to slow down the song a little bit in order for it to be posted on Soundcloud but once I got it to download as an MP3 in my post, I realized I didn’t need to slow it down. However, I kind of preferred the altered version, so I just kept it that way. Below I have just the MP3 insert, the embedded Soundcloud, and then also Sepehr’s version of the assignment, just for fun.
Work Itself
Narrate the process
I had to listen to each song at least 10 times before I could figure out what parts sounded best. It was a very frustrating process. I wanted it to sound like one fluid song and it was heartbreaking when I realized I don’t have that kind of skill level.
I tried to match each individual song piece with the tone of the story line. I think figuring out what I wanted the story to be first was a really big help. It made it easier to determine which song went where and how each one was going to fit with the next.
