tantalizing text – Assignment Bank

The Freddy Affair, Episode 1

“The Freddy Affair,” by Andrew Forgrave, on Flickr

Paul Bond (@phb256, on Twitter) posted a request earlier today for some #noir106 bumpers for ds106radio. After a bit of messing around, I decided that this particular project needed a new voice, and so the narration was re-recorded (and slightly modified). We always tend to be hyper-critical of our own recorded voices when we hear them. Anyway, I’m pleased with the result.

The Audio

The text evolved in conjunction with successive listens-and-speaks as I tried to match the narrative flow with the phrasing in the music. After a couple of recording efforts using the wonderful, free, open source, cross-platform Audacity, I sourced a bit of ambient street sound from freesound.org to add at the beginning and the ending.

Street noise: “street short” by hoptenon on freesound.org (CC0 1.0)
Music track: “Pink Fish Signs V2″ by GeeNerve from the 2004 recording Suspense Dance Delights (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Given that the backing music track is 0:57 in length, I was initially going for a 1-minute bumper. But in the final analysis, I decided that this might instead be better positioned as the initial episode of some kind of #noir106 radio short.

The Image

As I was pondering what to use for a graphic to accompany the audio track on Soundcloud, I decided to make use of a screen capture I had already collected. The image is from the opening credits of Alan Parker‘s 1987 film “Angel Heart,” starring Mickey Rourke as a down on his luck P.I. in post-WWII New York/New Orleans. (I’ll save my commentary on the film — and my GIFs — for another post.)

Opening Credit Scene from Angel Heart (1987) film by Alan Parker

I cropped the image to provide a 1:1 square album cover using the most interesting part, and then tried out a number of fonts found on fontspace.com.

I poked around with several before settling on DK P.I. which has a grunge-typewriter look — the kind you get from the P.I.’s busted-up typewriter after it’s been knocked off the desk and shot, four times too many.

You can see a number of different looks below that I tried before settling on the chosen font.

“The Freddy Affair font experiments,” animated GIF by @aforgrave

You can also see that I decided to change the title from “The Freddy Files” to “The Freddy Affair” during the album cover preparation.

The Process

In this post I’ve tried to model linking, embedding, attribution, and the process of sourcing and documenting visual, audio and font resources. I didn’t go into the details of using Audacity or Photoshop, but there is time enough for each of those in the coming weeks — by me or by others in the community.

Although this is perhaps a bit long for a #ds106radio bumper, it probably sells the #noir106 experience and invites the listener to tune in to #ds106radio in coming days — so I’ve also tagged it for Audio Assignment 36: Create a DS106Radio Bumper

Let me know if I’ve missed something!

The ds106 GIFfer Inducted into The Smithsonianary Institute

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“The ds106 GIFfer,” by aforgrave, on Flickr

Submitted in response to the ds106 Design Assignment 950, “A Memorial For Fairuz’s PC.”

I decided to create a generic tribute to all the great workhorse computers of all ds106 artists — at some point, some day, your trusty computer will say, “I am done,” and it too, will take its place, in the Smithsonianary Institute. In actuality, this image of The Unknown ds106 GIFfer, rubbing shoulders with UNIVAC, will stand in its place.

This remarkable photograph of UNIVAC was taken by Trey Ratcliff (Stuck In Customs) and cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo by Stuck in Customs: flickr.com/photos/stuckincustoms/4627052792/

The image of the ds106 GIFfer (minus the stickers, I added those) was found in multiple versions on the internet. Original image source unknown.

This was a fun assignment, no doubt.

May your own, personal ds106 GIFfer last until you are ready to replace it, and beyond. #4life.

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Deleted Scene from “Reçette Pas Nécessaire” Later Shows Up in “The Shining”

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“Deleted Scene from “Reçette Pas Nécessaire” (print damaged during processing) by aforgrave, on Flickr

A poorly developed film negative (see above) resulted in this scene being edited out of the final cut of the third film in Julia Child’s “Le Chef de la mort” action trilogy, “Reçette Pas Nécessaire.”

You can get some sense of the original drama in this animated GIF assembled from two frames salvaged from the scene:

“Deleted Scene from “Reçette Pas Nécessaire” (restored as animated GIF) by aforgrave, on Flickr

As her fans know, Child was often heard exclaiming, “Why use just one knife, when a cleaver and a handful of knives can do such a better job?”

It is commonly agreed upon in Hollywood by people in the know that due to the unfortunate mishandling of the original negatives for this scene in “Reçette Pas Nécessaire,” when the effect was again attempted many later by the same cinematographer while working on The Shining, it was the latter film that benefited from the first exposure of the effect to theatre-going audiences.

A GIF from The Shining, commonly agreed to be derivative of the original (but damaged) scene from the much earlier Julia Child film “Reçette Pas Nécessaire.”

Most agree that, despite the improved technology used in the later film (better lenses, larger film stock, and most notably, colour), the use of a single knife and the absence of a corpse within the shot diminishes the effect from that of the Child original. There is no doubt that the later entry is clearly derivative.

“Oh, we saw The Shining once on VHS,” Child said many years later. “It doesn’t bother us in the least. We had fun making our films, and after a career of sharing our expertise in both the cooking and film industries, we’re just happy to see that our work is being valued and re-served to sate the appetites of today’s young people.”

—

This is my first official (albeit contrived) entry for the Visual Assignment 2: Say It Like the Peanut Butter assignment. Yes, this GIF is from television, rather than from a favourite movie, but it stands on the originality of the flickering knife effect, the resultant homage that it pays to the assignment, and also helps to set the record straight about the true origin that Shining GIF. LOL.

(In actuality, a static image from this would have been my preferred photo source for The Daily Create TDC 381: Julia Child Action Poster, but the quality of the video was too poor and too dark.)

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Since Inception, DS106 Radio Is TOPS! #2years #4life

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“Since Inception” by aforgrave, on Flickr

Are you listening? Well, ARE you listening? You better be!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DS106RADIO !!!! YOU ROCK !!!

#ds106radio is celebrating its second birthday this weekend. Of course you’ve listened to the open, online, free-form internet radio offshoot of the University of Mary Washington’s Digital Storytelling course, DS106, RIGHT??

I’m sure that DS106Radio’s stickiness comes directly off of Grant Potter’s duct tape. The ds106 community embraces, encourages, supports, and requires the striving for creativity and expression.

Happy Birthday, ds106radio!

The image is captured from Christopher Nolan’s 2010 mind-bending film, Inception, from the scene were Cobb confesses as to how he tricked Mal into understanding that they were, indeed, in Limbo, and needed to return to the “real” world. I’ve made several GIFs of the top from the film. As I was finishing this one, the pun came to mind.

At which point GIF became considerably more involved.

Originally down to 15 frames, with an interval of 0.1 seconds per, the rotation rate of the top seemed and looked right. Longer intervals would have made it move slowly, clunky, and defeated the illusion of the endlessly spinning top. So to get enough frames for the text (rather than just an on/off static text at the end, I wound up using the copy all frames – paste after last – reverse selected frames technique to lengthen the loop. That extended it to ~30 frames. Then, as I started adding new layers for the text and checking the timing, I found that things needed considerably more time so as to not look too rushed. And I decided to split the top line into two pieces. And then have ds106radio stick around to resonate with the #4life once all the other text was gone. In the end, there were 90 frames in the final GIF. They were still based on those original 15 layers/frames, with 5 additional layers added for the text. And then hand toggled on or off (with gradual adjustments to text transparency) to get the end result.

Originally the text was even closer to the dark colour palette (mostly grey), but it was just a bit too subtle. I settled on web-safe #333333 — it might still be a bit subtle, but I’m good with it. I’m going to stick this one into Animated GIF Assignments 869: GIF the ds106.

It’s been especially fun listening to ds106radio the last few days, as folks drop in and play tunes and celebrate. Although I think the current playlist is on a second repeat since I started listening earlier today. Might need to do something about that.

Is it your time to give Otto a break??

Thanks, DS106radio, for your role in supporting this artistic community. And now, go make us all some art, dagnabbit!

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Tapestry Tale: The Hollow Forest

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A simple click on the ds106 Assignments randomizer link brought up Design Assignment 613: Tell a Tale on a Tapestry. Intrigued, and following the link to to Bildwirkerey von Bayeuxbe, I did, indeed, find the “Historic Tale Constrvction Cit”, a web-based app inspired by the Tapestry of Bayeux.

Using the (javascript) web-app was simple enough, and resulted in this little story. Can you solve the simple mystery? There are three supporting clues.

“The Hollow Forest” by aforgrave, on Flickr

It was also fun to play around with language a bit in writing the text. Try the site yourself. Create your own story! Bildwirkerey von Bayeuxbe