Another day just me being bored. So I thought why not create a random album for a band that does not exist? Going through websites to give me the words and what I need to make it weird and not make sense. To create something to laugh at or regret later on.
After reading Roger Ebertâs guide to reading movies, we had to analyze a classic movie scene. Given that a lot of the scenes for me were from movies that I had never heard (except for a few, such as Rocky, Apocalypse Now, and The Dark Knight), I decided to use the cutscene from Destiny 2: Forsaken just after Cayde-6, the Hunter Vanguard and one of the âwise guysâ from the series, has been shot and permanently killed. I feel the high contrast in the video helped describe the new tone of the game, whereas before the game had been more lighthearted yet tried to portray itself seriously, now it is going in a much darker tone, even with maybe one or two humorous moments. The very first shots where the camera is panning down and to the left and then zooming out, all while focused on Caydeâs coffin and the flag draped over it represents the somber tone of the scene.
As far as the audio is concerned, it is almost startling to hear the stark contrast between Ikora (the African-American woman)âs reaction and then Zavala (the blue humanoid)âs reaction to both Caydeâs death and Ikoraâs vengeful thoughts of going to war with the Reef, where Cayde was killed. Normally, Ikora is calm and collected, yet here the anger in her voice makes her seem irrational, compared to what she normally is. And with how serious Zavala is normally, hearing him say we should stay here and do nothing about Caydeâs death makes him feel almost emotionless – yes, he has been through a lot, especially with the Red War that ended recently where the Guardians (the player characters) lost control of the City, but it still makes him feel almost robotic compared to before. And when our character says, âYou wonât have to. Uldren Sov is mine.â, that vengeful, almost furious tone I feel comes up throughout the campaign’s storyline, even if not directly in the dialogue. It turns out that Uldren Sov was being manipulated and having hallucinations of his sister Mara, who had died during the Battle of Saturn, when Oryx had first invaded Sol, and that same question of âAre you so vengeful that you would kill someone not exactly under their own control?â is echoed throughout the expansion and storyline.
All in all, I feel the cinematography and the audio combined make this scene feel more powerful, emotional, and almost menacing, in a sense, compared to what a single picture could do, though some of the elements of photographic storytelling are present in the video.
This is the tell a story assignment from the assignment bank is worth 3.5 stars. Wow! This was an absolutely amazing assignment. I had a bit of trouble deciding on the topic and tone I wanted the my story to have. So, in the end, I actually came up with a quick, dark situation and expanded on it. I will admit that this is a pretty sad and not uplifting at all, but I feel that the mood and overall tone of the story reflects this as well.
One thing I really tried to make sure is to have the tone of my voice and to have enough pauses so help play the role a lot better. I also feel that the music I found complements the tone of the perfectly as well. Perhaps a mysterious ambient soundtrack would have been much more suiting, but I very much feel that the current one will always have that sense of class that an ambient track would never have.
I found this track from Bensound.com where all of their tracks here are royalty free, however, it’s still necessary to credit the site from which you’ve downloaded the tracks from.
Putting it all together in audacity was very easy as well. I have no experience leveling or syncing audio, but It was pretty easy to have them side by side, and playing at the same time so there will be nice background music.
The scene starts with the crew in the background of the shot as they move towards the camera and start moving from left to right,both of these changes are in the positive direction. This is meant to set up the scene as a good thing they are moving towards. Once they are in the shop and talking with someone Matt Damon’s character is constantly put in the left side of the screen with the person they are talking with center right of the screen. This positioning shows that the other person holds some form of importance. The lighting of the scene also adds a sense of gravity to the meeting, while Brad Pitt, George Clooney and the other person are all highlighted with red light and dark backgrounds, Damon’s character is less red and has a background out the window of the shop to bright daylight, a contrast that could imply some form of his character being out of place among the group. After the meeting the three of them are shown leaving the shop moving from right to left, in a negative direction, indicating that the meeting didn’t go well or something bad is about to happen.
Analyzing the audio we start with the characters of Clooney and Pitt rattling off multiple points at a fast pace. After the quick pep talk we are moved into a point halfway through a joke from the unknown person. The joke is concluded with some fake laughter. Whether this laughter is nervous or forced is unknown. Immediately after the forced laughter, the scene goes quiet and the only thing heard is the sounds of a cafe in the background. Next is some quiet, poetic quotes back and forth as some form of unknown code is passed between the parties of thieves. Once Damon’s character recites some poem the scene goes silent indicating some misstep on his part. Next we hear the party leave the cafe and Damon is told that he somehow managed to insult their contacts niece. The scene ends with Damon’s character being told that he is to stay here.
Combining the visual and audio we can get the full story of what happens. They trio of Clooney, Pitt, and Damon are walking up the street talking about what Damon specifically should and shouldn’t do at the meeting. In the cafe we again hear the end of a joke and the forced laughter of the group until Damon eventually joins the laughing and everyone stops once they’ve all laughed. The conversation turns to business as the contact puts it and the odd coded phrases are passed back and forth while Damon is quiet and unsure of what to do until their contact looks to Damon for the next piece of the conversation. He quotes, nervously, a poem and the entire group false silent as their contact stares down Damon and Clooney and Pitt look at him stunned like they don’t can’t believe he said that. Once the Clooney and Pitt leave the cafe to rejoin with Damon, who apparently had been sent outside to wait, it is revealed that he insulted their contacts niece and that Damon’s going to stay outside.
With only parts of the scene at a time the story was lacking, with just the visual we couldn’t hear what was being said or how it was being said. The part with Damon insulting the niece was completely absent. The sense that the meeting didn’t go well was still there but it wasn’t clear. With just the audio we couldn’t see the reactions of the people, until we were told what happened in the cafe we didn’t know that the contact looked so angry or that Clooney and Pitt looked so shocked by Damon. Only once we put both the visual and the audio together did we get the full weight of the scene.
During my semester in ds106, I found this assignment to be the best assignment all year. This was the best assignment in my opinion because it was easy and fun. It was easy because you didn’t have to do a lot; all you had to do was follow the directions of drawing 4 lines, 5 dots, and a curve to make any sort of design. If you were able to do those three things, then you could easily complete this assignment. For this tutorial, I will show everyone what I did to make this assignment as easy as possible to complete.
I was able to make this video by figuring out how to take footage of my screen by researching how on Google. It turns out the Quicktime Player on Mac can record what you are doing on your screen and you can talk in the background. After I found this out, it was quite easy to make a tutorial for everyone.
Well, that’s an odd title, but essentially, that is what I am here to teach you how to do today. Today you will be learning the essentials in… (drum roll)… how to record a day in the life! You can view the one I created here.  To make this tutorial easier, I have created a list, and incorporated images so that you can have text to read, as well as a visual. First off, I wanted to point out why I decided to create a tutorial around such a straight forward topic. That is because I truly enjoyed recording a day in my life, and being able to go back and show family members what I did on that certain day. This was probably one of my most liked assignments. Anyways, let’s get onto the list of how to successfully record a day in the life.
    5. Upload. Upload your video to YouTube or Vimeo, whichever you prefer. I personally prefer YouTube because they have the option to make your videos private or unlisted.
6. Create a Blog Post. The final step to the assignment is to bring it all together in a post, detailing how you went about creating it. Be sure to use accurate tags, and that you followed instructions within the assignment.
And that is how you create the perfect day in the life! Note, everything mentioned in this post are my own opinions on how to go about creating the assignment. If you want to add anything, or disagree with something I said, please let me know down below in the comments.
This assignment was one of the hardest assignments with trying to figure out what to do. The concept seemed easy with it being that you just have to take a 5 second film about anything. This means that you have to have something quick to film like a quick joke or gag; but I just couldn’t think of anything that funny in that short amount of time.
Then I remembered my dad’s plan for everyday life that he always says before he goes to work. However, I didn’t want it to feel scripted; so I just asked him what he planned to do on that day and secretly filmed him. He just so happened to say his usual plan of “Coming up with a plan to take over the world”, which he heard from “Pinky and the Brain” which is an animated tv series about 2 mice. The main character “Brain” said that phrase and now my dad always uses it.
After filming my dad, I imported the video into iMovie; added a visual filter (because it was dark footage), and then posted it to Youtube.
Overall, even though the video is a little longer than 5 seconds at 14 seconds. I am satisfied with the end result and I’m happy to have such a funny dad.
I’ve always liked poems. Whether its reading it in a book, as a quote on Twitter, listening to poems being read, or just listening to the poetry in music I’ve always liked poetry. So when I saw the chance to finish off my audio assignments with a reading of a favorite poem I jumped at the chance as if I wanted to dance. But then I had to think of what poem I should talk about and read. At that moment, I thought about the poem my grandpa told me read of Langston Hughes’ “I, Too” and thought it would be the perfect poem to read because of its deep background history of dealing with a time where discrimination prevailed. But enough about me jabbering on, you probably want to hear this great poem being read.
For the first assignment, I chose “A Letter to Yourself as a Child”.
Dear younger self,
You are 12 years old and you are about to start your first year of middle school, congrats! I know you’re scared and anxious to begin a new life at a new school, but things will be fine. Although you’re scared to make some new friends since most of your friends from elementary school went to a different middle school, you will eventually make friends through some trial and error.
A few words of advice I have are, don’t be too stressed and just be yourself! You end up making a lot of friends this way, so theres no need to try and be something you’re not. Don’t judge a book by its cover, and appreciate the easy work middle school has to offer! I know at age 12, the workload of a middle schooler can seem rough, but when you enter high school and then college you will learn to appreciate how easy you had it back in middle school.
Keep your head up, everything will be alright 
Future Sara
I thought that since this was one of my favorite assignments of the class that I would give a run down of how I approached this assignment!
Step one: Open up a word document. When you are writing a letter to yourself in the past there is no way that you can come up with that off the top of your head so the best thing to do is to type it out or write it down. Keep in mind that when you are writing this down you are eventually going to be recording yourself reading it so you might want to read over it once or twice to make sure everything you want to say makes sense.
Step two: Use either your movie maker or even record on Youtube you reading the letter. My best advice to you is to have the letter up on the screen while you are recording so the video won’t be of you looking down and reading it.
Step three: Recording the video. The best way to record this video is to be as authentic as possible. There doesn’t need to be fluff and crazy music to add in the background but if that’s what you want for your video that is totally up to you. I think that by having you reading it out loud to yourself actually makes the assignment stronger. It allows the audience also known as your classmates to get a better glimpse into you and who you were in your past.
Step four: Upload the video. If you are recording it live on Youtube then you life will be a whole ton easier since the work is pretty much done for you. If not then I suggest you share it to YouTube or whatever video site that you use the most.
Step five: Last but not least create a post about the video. It is one thing to write a letter and to record yourself reading it but in the post reflect on everything that you did. How you got to that final video and the process it took to make the final product!
I hope this helps you out and good luck!
