My blog is a creation
From the Mind of Jeremy Hillberry
It’s a website designed for my online class
That revolves around The Wire
It’s starting to be my creation
Because the thoughts come from Jeremy Hillberry
Eventually my domain will outlive my class
And I will have moved beyond The Wire
But I’ll always remember my original creation
Followjeremy.com, founded by Jeremy Hillberry
I gave this one a shot because I just think there are endless possibilities. This technique, as Alfred Hitchcock describes, is a way to use editing to change the emotion of a scene. As he describes, the same reaction can appear very differently depending on what you cut to/from. For my example, I found three video clips on YouTube. First, I found a funny clip of a dog on a couch. Then, I found a clip of Jim Carrey and Conan O’Brien laughing. Lastly, I found a clip of a tornado ripping through a suburban backyard. As you can imagine, puppies and tornados generally elicit drastically different reactions. In my mashup, Carrey and O’Brien laugh at the funny dog clip, making them seem like fun-loving people. However, the clip then cuts to the tornado ripping through the backyard and then shows Carrey and O’Brien laughing again, making them appear sadistic and unsympathetic. Check it out here:
The first design assignment I tried was the person’s face on an animal’s body. This one started off innocently, but as I was browsing through Facebook pictures, I found a truly terrifying picture of a buddy of mine from high school. It didn’t take much creative thinking to realize that this would be perfect to use as a face on a big gorilla. In terms of how I did it, I used Adobe Photoshop for the entire process. I enlarged and squared off his mouth and added some “wrinkles” to give him an angrier looking face. Then I blurred the face into the gorilla a little bit to make it look more “natural.” I may have gotten a little carried away–it’s pretty scary looking and I don’t think my buddy will be too pleased!
The next assignment I completed was a little less of a stretch. As you may remember from my previous posts, I’ve played guitar for almost 20 years. My guitar hero is Paul Gilbert from Mr. Big and Racer X. He’s an unbelievably talented guitarist and I’ve tried to emulate a lot of his playing style in my own. You can see him playing my absolutely favorite guitar solo ever in his cover of While My Guitar Gently Weeps here at about the 3:20 mark:
Anyway, I took a picture of me playing at one of my own gigs up in Worcester, MA–I love the face I’m making since I think it is very “rock n’ roll,” and I think it works perfectly on Paul’s body. I used Photoshop to crop out my head from the original picture and then added it to Paul’s body. I had to blend the background a little bit since our heads aren’t exactly the same size ;-). Anyway, check out all three images here:
I love having fun in Photoshop, so I really enjoyed this assignment. It was a little creepy at first, although I’m pretty sure that was my fault!
I am one of the volunteer cheerleaders for visual week (aka Telling Stories in Photos) for Headless DS106. Alan said that we don’t need pom poms to be cheerleaders:
@madamezubidar @giuliaforsythe pom-poms not necessary #ds106—
Alan Levine (@cogdog) September 23, 2013
But I went ahead and made an animated gif of me as a cheerleader anyway. This is my third semester participating in DS106 – back in Fall 2012 and Spring 2013 I was an open participant. If you are looking for ideas for how to tackle visual assignments, you can check out my Visual Assignments tag or anything under (Digital) Story Time since there are also relevant daily creates there. I have a dearth of tutorials on this subject, so that is one of the things I will be working on this week as I cheer all of you along!
To get the ball rolling, I thought I would start out the week by completing the one strongly recommended and super easy assignment of creating a Post “Secret”.
Not really a secret except to those who don’t know that I write fiction, but certainly fits the bill for “biggest dream in life.”
So, on to visual week! Happy photographing and photoshopping!
“It’s going to eat you up!!”
The how and why of the DS106 AnimatedGIFAssignment1162 created of Batman and Robin running away from the Chicken Heart was definitely fun to create. But the bulk of my project time and energy was put into on-line research to locate and link the images, audio files, and relevant websites that provide the story behind the story.
Arch Oboler recording “Lights Out”. (Photo Source)
During audio week of the UMW DS106zone summer 2013 on-line course in Digital Storytelling, I was introduced by Scottlo to the Arch Oboloer The Devil and Mr. O radio plays. As I started listening late one night I found that Oboler had created the “Lights Out” radio play Chicken Heart. This play had been the center of a favorite childhood comedy routine by Bill Cosby from his Wonderfulness album. And I eagerly began what turned out to be a fruitless quest to locate the original 1937 Oboler recording. Sadly, I discovered it was one of his lost episodes. 
Recordings of the original radio broadcasts in 1938 and 1942 are lost or unavailable, although Oboler later recreated the episode for a record album in 1962 – which I couldn’t locate. There is an 8 min abridged version that many mistake for the original. And amazingly while researching this blog post, I actually came across a December 31, 2008 recreation of the entire Chicken Heart radio play by the Post Meridian Radio Players.
Here’s a link to Wikipedia for those of you interested in learning a bit more about Arch Oboler little more background from Wikipedia.
From Wikipedia: Arch Oboler made effective use of atmospheric sound effects, perhaps most memorably in his legendary “Chicken Heart,” a script that debuted in 1937 and was rebroadcast in 1938 and 1942. It features the simple but effective “thump-thump” of an ever-growing, ever-beating chicken heart which, thanks to a scientific experiment gone wrong, threatens to engulf the entire world. Although the story bears similarities to an earlier Cooper episode (about an ever-growing amoeba that makes an ominous “slurp! slurp!” sound), Oboler’s unique choice of monster was inspired by a Chicago Tribune article announcing that scientists had succeeded in keeping a chicken heart alive for a considerable period of time after its having been removed from the chicken. Recordings of the original radio broadcasts are lost or unavailable, although Oboler later recreated this episode for a record album in 1962.
To create the GIFs and other images I first downloaded:
Imagination at work…
Using Photoshop Elements 11 for the mac I created a composite image of the little girl listening to the radio by using the magic wand tool to copy out the representative chicken heart images from the cartoons. I then adjusted the transparency of the cartoon images to 80% to give the impression of an imaginative mind at work and merged the layers.
It took more steps in the process than I was expecting to create the background image of the Chicken Heart terrorizing the city. It was important to show what the Chicken Heart was actually doing. In order to do that I had to shift the Batman & Robin images from the original center to the far right…
and move the original Chicken Heart image to the far left. This resulted in a blank area on the right hand side of the image that was corrected by duplicating the Chicken Heart graphic into a new layer and sliding it over to right.
GIF Background modified from original
At one point I had the blue car mysteriously hanging in mid air, which I promptly fixed. And the color mismatch you see above on the street is hidden behind Batman & Robin, but I had to be careful and align things properly.
Once I had the background completed, it was time to merge it with each of the 13 provided Batman & Robin image layers. For the full version of PhotoShop there was no need to merge the individual layers. If there’s a way to do that here, I’d be oh so grateful if you’d share it with me.
To produce the final GIF:
TA! DA! Batman & Robin terrorized by the Chicken Heart.
“It’s going to eat you up!!”
I’m not going to explain here! That’s what the audio is for silly.
What better way to show my appreciation than create a series of radio show bumpers for my teacher.
Scott Lo hosting the LoDown for DS106 this summer
AudioAssignments36 to create a DS106 Radio Bumper
HAPPY STUDENT improving her audio storytelling skills
5 different LoDown bumpers for Scott to use freely on his radio show and blog posts
What is a bumper? It is a short recording that identifies the radio station with signature music or an expression that makes sure the listeners know what they are tuned into.
There’s no mistaking that you know where you are and where you’re tuned into with this set of bumpers. I used as my foundation a single voice track that I recorded while in the grocery store parking lot with a new iPhone app, Recordium, that I downloaded yesterday at the recommendation of Scott on LoDown episode 12. Then the real fun began …….
I’ve been experimenting lately with how a soundtrack can drastically change the mood of the media project I’m working with. A few months back I was creating a photo slideshow for a friend, and it was amazing how the flow of images, and our decision to add title text or not, was altered by the choice of music. I’m able to illustrate that effect at some level with this set of bumpers. The spoken audio remains the same, just new music underneath.
I had plans to really show this effect by adding a soundtrack that was silly or comedic. But sadly, couldn’t find an audio file in my stock list of jingles and stingers in GarageBand that fit the bill. I’m still giggling though at finding the Medal Ceremony (LoDown3) and Broadcast News (LoDown 5) clips. I hope Scott will be just as amused and want to use them for DS106 Audio Week. 
I’d highly recommend anyone who hasn’t worked with soundtracks to try something like this. You gain a whole new understanding and appreciation for the emotional power of sound.
One last note: I’m sure most of us have run up against the powers that be and have had issues with YouTube or Facebook taking down our videos (or highjacking them by adding product advertisements – grrrrr) because of Copyright Infringement. My way of addressing this from the beginning is to use the Vimeo Music Store to locate tracks I can use legally without question. You can even create custom tracks that perfectly fit your videos. It’s a great resource and there is a lot there. There are free creative commons, $1.99 personal use licenses, and $20+ commercial use licenses available. I’ll test a tracks suitability and mood by having two windows open on my computer, one playing the slideshow the other playing the music file on Vimeo. Then when I find something I like, I pay the $1.99 just like on iTunes, and download it. Check it out.
[Other Radio Bumper projects I've completed: Obruni Podcasts, Mashing for DS106 Radio)]
Apart of this week’s work was to also finish out our contributions to the class and really make our marks! An essential way that we had to do this was through creating assignments for future classes, which was way more exciting than I thought it would be! Actually, my first assignment was made awhile ago because I had been anticipating this so it’s awesome that I finally go to submit it.
ASSIGNMENT #1(VIDEO): The first assignment I submitted was a Survival video! This idea came to me when my mom told me that she would never be able to survive as a freshmen in college because it is so different than when she was younger. So, I took this opportunity to make her video of some important things that would potentially help her survive her freshmen year if she had to go through it again. I made this four star’s just because it takes a lot more creativity than most would think. I just happen to have an ah-ha! moment that really helped me but I hope when people see my video, they also have those ah-ha moments that make the assignment easier. However, for those who don’t, that’s why I wanted it to be four star’s.
ASSIGNMENT #2(VISUAL): The second assignment I created as Adventure In A Day! Which only came to me after my friends and I were fooling around on my photobooth, pretending we were underwater, or going to Paris for the day. So I figured, almost every computer, or smartphone, has some sort of way to put themselves in a background to make it seem like they went on an ‘adventure’ for the day. Apart of the assignment is to also create a story around it, which is two star’s. However, if you make the effort to take multiple pictures and create a bigger storyline, than I would add a star for that extra effort and creativity!
Apart of this week’s work was to also finish out our contributions to the class and really make our marks! An essential way that we had to do this was through creating assignments for future classes, which was way more exciting than I thought it would be! Actually, my first assignment was made awhile ago because I had been anticipating this so it’s awesome that I finally go to submit it.
ASSIGNMENT #1(VIDEO): The first assignment I submitted was a Survival video! This idea came to me when my mom told me that she would never be able to survive as a freshmen in college because it is so different than when she was younger. So, I took this opportunity to make her video of some important things that would potentially help her survive her freshmen year if she had to go through it again. I made this four star’s just because it takes a lot more creativity than most would think. I just happen to have an ah-ha! moment that really helped me but I hope when people see my video, they also have those ah-ha moments that make the assignment easier. However, for those who don’t, that’s why I wanted it to be four star’s.
ASSIGNMENT #2(VISUAL): The second assignment I created as Adventure In A Day! Which only came to me after my friends and I were fooling around on my photobooth, pretending we were underwater, or going to Paris for the day. So I figured, almost every computer, or smartphone, has some sort of way to put themselves in a background to make it seem like they went on an ‘adventure’ for the day. Apart of the assignment is to also create a story around it, which is two star’s. However, if you make the effort to take multiple pictures and create a bigger storyline, than I would add a star for that extra effort and creativity!
When I began the Really Reality TV assignment, it was just one I picked at semi-random that I thought would get my creative juices flowing for today. So I clicked on the Reality TV Show name generator, and the first couple options were boring or just didn’t capture my imagination. But then I got Going to the Myth, and I thought, “hey, I like mythology, this could be fun!” Boy was I in for a surprise.
When you do a Google search for “going to the myth”, the fifth option is a Cracked article on alcohol myths, and the tenth is on myths about introverts. At first this struck me as a truly random combination of results and I had no idea what to do with it (and frankly, the juxtaposition of the two passages is a little odd). And then it occurred to me that although I’ve known a few people with substance abuse problems or all-out alcoholism who meet the stereotypes of the emotionally troubled or self-destructive alcoholic or a “party hard” fan who partied a little too hard, the majority have been people who use alcohol to overcome social anxiety. Heck, I’ve drunk a little too much before in situations in which I was nervous or felt like it would help me click with a group.
One thing that I have learned in life after college (and trust me, it took me a while to learn this) is that the people I have to get drunk to feel comfortable socializing with are not the people I want to be friends with. And I don’t enjoy “house parties” or bars – I can’t hear the conversations most of the time, and when I can, they usually aren’t interesting. I’d much rather hand out at a coffee shop, or invite a friend over for tea, and for meeting new people and making new friends there are lots of other ways to do it. You have to put in some effort, but in the end you end up finding friends who are a much better fit than those you find when drunk.
So that’s my PSA to all the people who drink to overcome social anxiety or awkwardness. A very different prologue than I had expected to write for a reality show called Going to the Myth. And now on to the show…
Show Description:
Considering that booze is one of the pillars of human civilization, it’s kind of shocking how little we know about it. For instance, we pointed out a while back that some popular misconceptions about alcohol persist despite being goddamned fatal.*
It can be terribly destructive for an Introvert to deny themselves in order to get along in an Extrovert-Dominant World. Like other minorities, Introverts can end up hating themselves and others because of the differences. If you think you are an Introvert, I recommend you research the topic and seek out other Introverts to compare notes. The burden is not entirely on Introverts to try and become “normal.” Extroverts need to recognize and respect us, and we also need to respect ourselves.**
Elevator Pitch:
How many people do you know who drink because it “loosens them up” and helps them “come out of their shell” or even turn into that mythical “life of the party”? In Going to the Myth, we follow one man’s struggle to overcome his shyness at parties and in the process enter into a battle with alcoholism that will change his life forever.
Tag Line: Do you really need to party hard? Can’t you just join a book club?
Text Sources:
*The 5 Most Ridiculous Drinking Myths You Probably Believe
Image Sources: Just shy (not antisocial) by George Kelly (“allaboutgeorge”), Alcohol Poisoning PSA Video Shoot by Stop Alcohol Deaths, Inc., Drinking Skills by FunGI_
