My place or yours?

This scene given this context changes everything!

I decided for this post to make a Gif from a scene from my all time favourite tv show: Sherlock and added alternate subtitles. I quite like the way this turned out but I would like to experiment more with gif’s now I have learnt how to create them.

To create this I used youtube convert to get the footage. I then opened premiere and imported the mp4 file. I unlinked and deleted the audio and cut the clip to the scene I wanted. I added text using a legacy title and started it later in the clip to match when Sherlock talks.

I then exported this as an Animated Gif.

I could have made a better one but I think I want to experiment more with this and create better ones with alternate subtitles as it’s odd but fun.

So this blog is my thoughts and process of completing the Subtitle GIF which is part of the AnimatedGIF assignment bank found on the ds106 website.

This assignment caught my eye as I am a big fan of GIF’s, for those who don’t know what a GIF is it contains a number of images or frames in a single file and the frames are presented in a specific order, in order to convey animation. That made GIF’s sound pretty complicated they’re actually quite simple, Here’s a great set of examples I looked at and you should too.
The assignment brief is very clear cut “Make a GIF and add subtitles! These can be real subtitles that weren’t available with the video, or not real ones that help tell your story”. I prefer these types of briefs that are straight to the point it means I can make a start straight away. It wasn’t actually the easiest of starts for one of my assignments as there was so much choice to do, I could literally choose any film or television show I could get my hands on to create a GIF out of. My initial thoughts for getting the ball rolling was to create a GIF from one of my favourite television shows such as Peaky Blinders or Black Sails. So I looked around for GIF generator sites and giphy is easily one of the best and the site I used.

This is what I first came up with when creating a GIF. I think it’s a good GIF it fits the brief and has some humour to it but it just seems a bit average. A lot of GIF’s are actually quite average and also seem random. The way I thought I would tackle this issue is rather then make a GIF from a scene of a series I like why don’t I make a GIF from an iconic scene of a film or series everybody knows.

Here is the GIF I decided to come up with. I believe I backed up my words that creating a GIF from an iconic scene is much more entertaining and holds more value.

Creating the GIF was not the hardest process especially with the help of giphy. The steps I took to create the GIF was to find the footage I wanted to use on YouTube.

After finding the YouTube link I simply pasted it into the GIF creator bar at the top of the page. This will transition you into the editing process of the GIF.

The editing stage is a couple of steps, the first step to take would be to find the time of the scene you want to capture on the YouTube video and set the start time to where you want the start of your GIF to begin. As the part I wanted to capture was 11 seconds into the video I set the start time to 00:11. And as the part of the scene I want to include in the GIF was 3 seconds long I set the duration to 3. The last part of editing was filling in the caption section. Obviously i’m captioning “Say hello to my little friend” from Scarface so I typed that into the caption bar which brings it up onto the animation. Finally, as seen in the screenshot above I set the style to subtitle as this is perfect for the assignment brief. Once I filled out everything I wanted in the editing process I clicked create GIF at the bottom of the page and a link to my finalised GIF was presented. Once you are given the link to your GIF you also have the option to share to social medias, as well as the option to download.

Overall, I’m very pleased with the Scarface GIF I’ve created, I would say choosing such famous film scenes is going to make your GIF stand out more and not appear to be just a random piece of media. Giphy is definitely the best GIF generator site to create a moving image GIF. It’s also best suited if you want to quote a scene from a film/show.