umw – Page 3 – Assignment Bank

post-it notes & to-do lists!

View Assignment Details

All right, I want to make a really fun, pop-culture-related third assignment, so here it goes:

Choose a character or characters that you like, or choose a movie, world, whatever! Then, create Post-It notes in an image editor–multi-colored squares with handwritten-looking-text–that the character or characters in your chosen world would leave for themselves around the house. The Notes can be reminders, inside jokes, to-do-lists, grocery lists…whatever you want, write it down, then share it here! Make sure to let us know which universe/story/character you’re referencing, and include outside material (videos/clips/music, etc.) to help us understand the setting/context!

For my example, I used Steve Rogers AKA Captain America, Bucky Barnes AKA The Winter Soldier, and Sam Wilson AKA The Falcon from Marvel’s The Avengers universe.

The full cast! Steve’s actor is in the middle in the blue suit and beard, to the far left is Sam’s, and to the far right is Bucky’s.

In a lovely, less sad, post Winter Soldier verse, Bucky, Sam, and Steve are all roommates. Steve totally wants them to eat healthy, but Bucky and Sam revolt and demand sugary cereal. The following Post-It Notes ensue.

Ignore the messy edges–whoops. I edited this with the Paintbrush Mac app rather than Photoshop, because Photoshop seemed like overkill for this assignment!

View Assignment Details

postcards from the past.

View Assignment Details

Based off of a final project I had in Spanish class, this assignment I’ve created involves history and some form of artistic creativity–preferably writing, but I won’t limit you to just that medium!

Find an old archive: letter, postcard, photograph, memo, computer document, e-mail. Then, form a story surrounding the piece. Develop a general, basic narrative or back story and characters. It doesn’t have to be super long; it can be a haiku or a novella–your choice. Let the past inspire you!

My example is a postcard from World War I. It was discovered unsent and from an unknown author, and attached to the postcard was a small poppy, addressed to the soldier’s love. I wrote the following poem in Spanish about the card:

“Las amapolas”

Las amapolas están rojas
Como sus labios
Como sus mejillas después de te besaba
Por la primera vez

La hierba debajo de
Mi cuerpo
Tallos altos estrujados por mi peso
Me sienten la misma de su abrazo, de sus rumores en mi oreja
Suaves y apasionantes

(Las amapolas están rojas como mi sangre)

Recuerdo la carta que te envié
Recuerdo las memorias que volvían
Corriendo con cada trazo de escritura

Tu sonrisa en la luz del sol
Tu mano en mía
El aire fresco y abundante con la primavera y la posibilidad
De una eternidad contigo

Días innumerables de trabajo
Cayendo en mi cama
Exhausto
Días de ahorro y no noches de diversión
Y el momento de orgulloso
En que yo finalmente tenía
El anillo de diamante en mis manos

La noche antes de mi despliegue
Cuando tú lloraba y le pegaba a mi pecho
Exigía una razón por la que el país y la honradez
Eran más importantes de tú

(Nada es más importante de tú)

Ahora
Como esta noche y su anillo de diamante
El cielo es tu mirada
Y las estrellas son tus ojos
La Tierra de Nadie está finalmente vacía de gritos y gemidos.
Y estoy tan agradecido que la cosa final que yo voy a ver
Es tu cara

“The Poppies”

The poppies are red

Like your lips

Like your cheeks after I kissed you

For the first time

The grass beneath

My body

Tall stems crushed by my weight

They feel the same as your embrace, your whispers in my ear

Smooth and thrilling

(The poppies are red like my blood)

I remember the letter that I mailed you

I remember the memories that came

Running with each stroke of the pen

Your smile in the light of the sun

Your hand in mine

The air fresh and rich with spring and the possibility

Of an eternity with you

Countless days of work

Falling into my bed

Exhausted

Days of saving and no nights full of fun

And the moment of pride

When I finally had

That diamond ring in my hands

The night before my deployment

When you cried and beat my chest

Demanding a reason why country and honor

Were more important than you

(Nothing is more important than you)

Now

Like this night and your diamond ring

The sky is your gaze

And the stars are your eyes

No Man’s Land is finally empty of screams and moans.

And I am grateful that the last thing that I will see

Is your face.

The assignment link!

View Assignment Details

The Crew of the Enterprise watches Troll 2!

View Assignment Details

Or, statements and plot lines that could only exist and be made possible in the whacky, wonderful world of ds106!

I already had a bit of a Star Trek fangirl moment this week while working on assignments, so as I was perusing the assignment bank for more options, I saw this description and figured–why not? Never enough Captain Kirk, Bones, and Spock, if you ask me!

Upon viewing the original piece, I got quite a laugh. Whether or not you enjoyed Miley Cyrus’s and Robin Thicke’s 2013 Video Music Awards performance, you have to acknowledge that it did generate a lot of media frenzy and controversy. The Enterprise‘s crew’s reactions seemed to perfectly fit the mixed emotions of the modern, American public: confused, shocked, horrified, and curious. Kirk’s flinching and Sulu’s “oh my” gawk were made even more hysterical as Miley’s hit single played softly in the background.

I let this assignment sit overnight, because I wanted to think of material fitting enough to replace that performance while still inciting such a reaction from Kirk, Spock, and friends. I initially wanted to use more celebrity fails or embarrassing moments, but Justin Bieber’s fails were too subtle or short to use in the video, and some people genuinely admire and enjoy Kanye West. I didn’t want to use any “singing fails,” either, because as a singer myself, I realize that no matter how experienced or talented the performer, there are just some off-days!

I was really struggling with what to use as a clip when it dawned on me: carry on my meme theme (see first link in this post for more meme fun!). One of my favorite, funny memes of the past few years is Troll 2, which has earned its place in the YouTube “Movies/Acting That’s So Bad It’s Good” Hall of (In)Fame(y). I remember watching this video with my guy friends (they seemed to enjoy Internet and meme culture more than my fellow females) in high school and constantly running around quoting that oh-so-dramatic ending: oh my gooooood! Heck, even as an adult in college, I still re-act to some situations quoting Troll 2 and rejoice when someone catches the reference!

Now, Alan/CogDog provided a very helpful mini-tutorial within his original assignment post on how to go about this project–Picture in/for Picture in iMovie. After a quick check into Apple’s Support page, I found a great, short video explaining how to complete the process and easily downloaded the YouTube videos before uploading them into iMovie.

That was about as easy as it got.

I spent the next two hours infuriatingly trying to clip enough of Troll 2 to cover Miley’s foam-finger-humping and twerking. The issue with the original video is that there are literal half-second shots of the screen, so I had to cut down clips to miniscule, ridiculous sizes to replace old footage. I even used some artistic liberty and cut out a few shots that seemed superfluous (this was not an easy task for me, mind you–I felt badly for cutting out my beloved Spock’s face) in order to reduce the amount of overlaying/inserting that I had to do.

Unfortunately, because iMovie isn’t advanced enough to give me the EXTREMELY precise, millisecond cuts I needed, the frame(s) of Troll 2 occasionally appear over Kirk or another crew member’s face before flashing to and fitting on the Enterprise screen. Alas, this is a price I’m willing to pay as the remix artist, because I’d rather see snippets of Troll 2 over actors’ faces than random milliseconds of Miley Cyrus’s tongue.

The most annoying part of this project, though, was the audio. The original video creator morphed together the original Star Trek sound and the VMA performance audio, which meant that even when I detached the audio from the clip, I couldn’t take apart the layers. I couldn’t separate Kirk’s commands from Miley’s catchy choruses.

Frustrated and wishing I had more advanced audio tools (Logic or ProTools, anyone?), I decided I would turn up Troll 2‘s audio and duck/reduce the volume of the underlying track. This meant it would be harder to hear the characters, but most of the time, their expressions spoke for themselves!

I also experimented with audio fade-ins and fade-outs, and at one point, when Cyrus’s song is turned up full blast in the original video, I had to mute the original track all together.

At the end, though, the sound is redeemed as I repeated/looped the “oh my gooood!” scream to last until the final moment. The effect the exclamation appears to have–driving the crew mad–is quite entertaining, and I laughed quite a bit once the impatience and frustration faded!

This is far from perfect and clean cut, which was an excellent practice for me to control and curb my perfectionism, but enjoy Cap’n Kirk Reacting to Troll 2.

View Assignment Details

Limitless Lucy.

View Assignment Details

Much like the chipmunk-ify assignment a week or so back, I texted my friend to ask her opinion on which two similar movies to mash together for an all-new-movie poster. She was her typical, kind self and threw out a couple of suggestions, but neither of them clicked with me.

Mean Girls and Clueless are similar in that they have a strong female lead and delve into female interaction and young adult culture, but the overall tones are very different; one is more empowering and positive while the other is drenched with negativity. Plus, Clueless is one of my favorite movies, and I’ve never once compared the two.

Aside from one or two viewings with my mom and knowing a couple classic quotes, I don’t know enough about The Princess Bride to make a strong comparison with any other movie, especially one I saw over five years ago like Stardust.

Long story short, despite my friend’s much appreciated attempts, I was on my own. So many movies with comparable plots and tropes crossed by mind–action-packed car races, international spy thrillers–so I tried to remember movies I’d seen recently, and one immediately popped into my brain: Lucy starring Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman. The general plot is that the main character ingests a new street drug and is able to use 100% of her brain, so she becomes insanely powerful, realizing her full potential as a human being and is able to stop time and make things levitate.

I saw the film with one of my best friends who was visiting me on campus a couple of weeks back. We saw the film via Cheap Seats on campus, and the audience was surprisingly empty (the most packed I’ve ever seen the Cheap Seats audience was a showing of Frozen last semester). My friend and I enjoyed the cinematography and awesome special effects, but the plot was disjointed and the ending unsatisfying and confusing.

A movie often compared with Lucy is 2011’s Limitless with Bradley Cooper. In fact, Lucy and Limitless are often called the male-and-female versions of one another. Again, the plot of Limitless is the main character taking a pill that allows him total brain control and power. Thrilling action ensues.

While the two films are similar plot-wise (dare I say remixes of each other?!), the settings and characters are very different. Lucy has a more feminist, intellectual flair (Scarlett Johansson taking control of and owning every situation she’s placed in without a man or anyone’s help, and Morgan Freeman plays a neuroscientist), while Cooper’s Limitless is more spectacle and arguably easier to follow.

I decided to combine them, regardless of their similarities and differences, into Limitless Lucy. I took Limitless‘s original theatrical release poster as a base, because it’s filled with cool light effects, swirls, and striking colors that are easy to edit, and I edited out Bradley cooper’s smaller form and the subtitle/text.

Limitless’s original poster

Then, I added Lucy’s/Scarlett Johansson’s eyes, which are colored a striking blue. The drug the character takes is the same color blue, so the eye shot was a popular marketing image.

As exemplified here.

I debated on how much I wanted to match the eyes/blend the eyes into the background image, because I wanted Scarlett Johansson’s character and her coinciding awesomeness and feminism to stand out rather than be overpowered by Cooper’s male character.

I finally did a little bit of background erasing and opacity to make the skin tone less striking, and then, I put a filter over the whole thing as well as upped the saturation, vibrancy, and contrast to help everything blend together that much more, and the changes enhance the dramatic red tones in Cooper’s face and around Lucy’s eyes. The result came out quite nicely; your eyes are drawn to Cooper and then Lucy’s striking blue irises. I easily found a matching font, size, and subtle inner shadow effect to compliment Limitless‘s text.

Limitless Lucy

Imagine Bradley Cooper and Scarlett Johansson both using 100% of their brains (even though that concept is a scientific myth!) and kicking butt as super humans. I’d buy tickets to see that for sure!

View Assignment Details

Way Down in The Hole…Lotta Video! – Week 11-12 Summary

View Assignment Details

Way Down in the Hole-Lotta Video

Over a two week period, we were required to do a plethora of video assignments totaling at least 16 stars worth! We also were required to do at least two daily creates each.

Introductions:

The introductions which I had done this week included my two posts for a video assignment on

Daily Creates:

*Daily Creates Included my Parking Poet Lauret Blog -

In this blog I created my own poem about the woe’s of parking.

*My Internet Memories of Yester_Year blog in which I detailed my very first experiences with the internet overall.

My Other daily create included a Sound Map

This daily create caused me to be more aware of my surroundings and it was interesting to see the sounds I detailed on paper.

Assignments:

*The four assignments I did included the Return to the Silent Films Era Assignment worth 4 1/2 stars.

Which I detailed in my Child’s Play blog. I used a horror film for this choice because it allowed me to respond better with more emotion being evoked from seeing something that is frightening by minus the sound. I always say that one’s imagination could be your worst enemy in these cases.

*The Second assignment was the Movie Trailer Mash-Up. For this assignment I wanted it to be comedic. I choose the old 80’s footloose dance compilation trailer and a dance scene with Terry Crews from the movie White Chicks.

I choose to play off of the concept of dance, and I choose one of the funniest scenes from the movie where actor Terry Crews has a dance monologue in the movie White Chicks.

*The Third assignment was the Video Essay – for this Assignment I choose some of the earlier most impressions I got from The Wire.

Last but now least, I was instructed to do a Swede of the Wire which I took video from the Season 3, Episode 11, Death of Stringer Bell.

Overall Feelings for this week I felt as if I was overwhelmed, I still had a lot of technical difficulties with video editing especially when it came to using my own video in which I had uploaded.

I think that basis was to start early as I did not have any issues with any of my other videos except this last one. I realize that one needs to be patient in addition, I look forward to using all of my skills and attributes that I have acquired over these weeks for audio, visual, and video to add this to the creation of my final project for The Wire.

View Assignment Details

“Hello, Clarice.”

View Assignment Details

One of my favorite movies is Silence of the Lambs. It was my first introduction to the very talented and dapper Anthony Hopkins (Meet Joe Black will forever make me cry) and is an excellent thriller. Hopkins is also one of my mom’s favorite actors, and we watch movies of his together quite frequently–therefore, more good memories and associations with his work despite the at times darker tones and themes.

Initially, when I was planning the Chipmunk-ify a scene assignment, I wanted to do the opening from 1997’s Romeo + Juliet (Leonardo DiCaprio FOREVER). I made this decision, because I texted my friend, a huge Shakespeare fan, asking her which scene from ANY movie I should alter. She immediately responded with: THE OPENING FROM ROMEO + JULIET. We then proceeded to text each other clips and quotes from the apparently faithful-but-still-hysterical script and movie.

Sadly, when I went back to find the ONE clip I was able to find of the opening (it was in Italian, even!), it had been removed due to copyright claims. I was bummed, but I quickly started brainstorming for a new movie. I didn’t want to do a comedy, because making that funny via Chipmunk voices would be too easy of a task. I wanted to do either a drama or a thriller.

I thought of famous movie scenes: The Godfather, Scarface, Titanic, etc. Then, I remembered: the one scene my mother both loves and hates to quote because it’s so crazy creepy and awesome at the same time: meeting Hannibal Lecter and “Hello, Clarice” from Silence of the Lambs.

Thankfully, the clip was available thanks to Fox UK on YouTube! I tried to poke around and find the “can you make the lambs stop screaming, Clarice?” scene–my personal favorite–but had no luck. I settled on the introduction to Lecter and set to work.

Again, thanks to this site, I was able to convert the YouTube video into mp4 format easily. I then input the file into iMovie and set about trying to alter the audio. Frustratingly, iMovie ’09, the version on my computer, doesn’t have advanced audio manipulation options, so I had to export the .aif file to Garageband and change the pitch in that program.

Trickier said than done–even with my Garageband experience, the .aif file arrived unable to be edited, and I had to browse the ever-trusty Mac forums to find my solution. After copying and fiddling with the sound, I had to carefully level the pitch alteration. Because of the low quality of the ripped audio, too much of an alteration muddled the speech so that the viewer couldn’t understand what was being said, and too little alteration to clear the speech hardly made a difference. Finally, I found a middle ground, saved the file, re-loaded it into iMovie, inserted it back into the video–the perfect timing remained, thank goodness!–and added credits.

Personally, I think chipmunk Hannibal Lecter is far less scary than normal Lecter, but I still wouldn’t accept a dinner invitation from him or Felix Yusupov.

PS: No, I haven’t read the novel. Is it any good?

View Assignment Details

#notworththehaunt

View Assignment Details

If you were following my blog during the month of October, you are familiar with my group’s radio show. Since the assignment was due shortly before Halloween (the show actually premiered the eve of Halloween, which was perfect!), us group members decided to have a spooky theme. We decided two of us would narrate scary stories and two or three would talk about haunted places in Virginia. Each of us also was required to create a commercial and bumper to include in the show.

I chose to narrate the Creepypasta story The Rake, and for my commercial, I created a parody of a PSA. In the parody, I urged those who are prone to mischief on Halloween and/or Devil’s Night to stay away from Ouija Boards. I recorded my voice narrating a super serious warning and underlaid it with piano loops from Garageband. The resulting effect was supposed to echo the old The More You Know PSAs (The included example is from the TV show Scrubs, because Scrubs is awesome).

When I was browsing for more video assignment options, I stumbled upon one that suggested you create a PSA. It could be “as serious…or as silly” as I wanted, so I decided this would be a perfect way to continue my Ouija Board PSA from the previous post! Oddly enough, however, I didn’t want to star in this video or get anyone to film the lines for me, so I decided not to go the More You Know route.

Instead, I planned the video to appear as a set of memories overlaid with flashback voices that narrate/hint at the story of a young adult messing around with Ouija Boards at peers’ urging and then suffering the consequences.

First things first: I had to find royalty free or creative commons footage. I looked around for stock footage, and GettyImages as well as Shutterstock offered quite a nice library, but everything cost money that I currently don’t have. I was seriously frustrated, because there were some genuinely creepy cemetery scenes offered by those sites!

I debated on taking my camera and exploring the nearby Confederate cemetery for material, but I was a bit too creeped out by that idea.

Out of curiosity, I decided to see if YouTube offered any royalty free stock footage, and lo’ and behold, I found several users that offered such resources! Of course, I gave them credit at the end of my video and linked to them at the end of this post.

I found some excellent overhead, cloud, time-lapse footage, various Halloween-themed footage, and several cemetery shots. After doing a mental happy dance at my good fortunate and the gift of technology that kept me from having to crawl around a probably-haunted-cemetery at night time, I started to edit the video together. I downloaded the clips after converting them to .mp4s thanks to this site.

It took a lot of work to cut out different areas of the original footage. I first broke apart the already-short narrative into shorter scenes: the urging of the protagonist to play with Ouija Boards and goof around in creepy areas, the actual act of using the Board by candlelight, and then the paranormal consequences.

I paid close attention to details such as lighting/angle to capture the dreamy, snapshot mood I was aiming for in my overall video, and I even added a few filters to different scenes to enhance the emotion I wanted emphasized for that particular shot (for example, the cemetery has a filter called “Old World” that echoes the concept of the dead and the past).

The only voice overs in this video would be the voices of the main character’s friends talking through their experience, so all other context was established via inserted title and transition slides. I carefully timed and chose the designs of each slide to be consistent with the straightforward, PSA shell but also effective with a spooky twist such as red lettering or jarring fade ins/fade outs.

Next, I added sound. I found a royalty free, free-to-download music site and searched their horror genre, which had some very nice material. I selected a piece called “Possession” to drive home the idea that a spirit can come forth from the Board and wreak havoc in a human’s life and mind. I then added it to the video.

I was at work when it came time to record the friends’ voices. Since I really wanted to accomplish this project on my own, I didn’t ask for any actors to help me record. Rather, in between appointments, I casually slipped into a consultation room and privately recorded myself reciting a simple script so that I didn’t look insane out in the reception area muttering to myself about Ouija Boards.

iMovie has a built-in recording option, so I went ahead and took advantage of that shortcut rather than messed around in Garageband, which took a few trials and errors but was quite simple once I figured out the controls.

I lowered my voice slightly to imitate male voices as well as kept my own tone to reflect females: a mixed group of Ouija Board participants. The script was interspersed with lots of “dudes” and “likes” to give it an authentic, irresponsible, young adult feel. I also allowed myself to do the voices in one take to again increase the conversational, off-the-cuff style.

To make sure the voice wasn’t too loud (I recorded it close to my microphone, so the track was automatically louder), I turned up the music a bit higher than originally intended and turned down the voice over’s volume. This took three or four watch-throughs and some tinkering, but the levels were finally acceptable.

Actually a LOT more fun than it looks…

I then stepped back out into the reception area of my work and discovered an appointment had been waiting for me while I recorded a track about Ouija Boards. Whoops. Thankfully, she was a few minutes early, anyway, and very understanding.

Lastly, I wanted a scream. After browsing freesounds.org, I found a digitally altered scream with some added effects that I actually liked more than a plain scream! I added in the screech right after the NOT ANYMORE frame and over the few seconds of suspenseful, terrifying blackness.

After adding on end credits, I uploaded the piece to Vimeo! The flickering light effect followed by the skull face is particularly effective, if I do say so myself! (I had to reverse the Reaper footage so that his skeleton face would be one of the first things you saw!)

The sponsoring organization and hashtag (trying to make this PSA for modern audiences, y’know!) are made up, by the way, and if either are currently in use, I had no idea and would be interested to see what people are saying about the trends!

Let me know if my PSA spooks you into not messing with Ouija Boards, or, let me know if you’ve ever had a noteworthy Ouija Board experience!

Credits:

View Assignment Details

TALKING TO MYSELF IS HARD…

View Assignment Details

…In iMovie, that is.

Seriously, though–this was definitely the hardest assignment for me this whole two weeks, and it’s because I made a simple mistake. Worse yet, the simple mistake is quite visible in the final product. Ugh. My perfectionist self is dismayed (but my kinder side is insisting that this is a “learning experience, Kailey–grow from your mistakes!”)

The two required video assignments for this week were either have a conversation with yourself or sing with myself, and I didn’t feel like warming up my vocal chords or picking a song to duet. Due to this lack-of-motivation and/or slight shyness because I haven’t sung in too long (seriously, once I have time over winter break, I’m going to go all out belting every moment that I can), I chose to talk with myself.

I decided to film at night in my room, because again, even though I’m used to explaining odd art projects at this point, I still would like to avoid questioning and very confused neighbors as much as possible.

Next, I had to find a relatively clear, uncluttered area of my room to use as a backdrop. My closets have quotes on them (I’m all about that morning inspiration when I’m half asleep and grumbling about why early classes are totally unfair), so that would be distracting. One of my dressers has little trinkets and cards to remind me of my family, and my desk carries my computer. My last dresser, however, has items that can be temporarily relocated (and, actually, viewing the video, it looks like I forgot to move a necklace on the surface–whoops. My friend and I had just spent two days–not even kidding–untangling the multilayered accessory from the depths of tangled-necklace-hell, and I was hesitant to touch the thing let alone move it).

After picking my filming spot, I grabbed my laptop and situated it on a conveniently placed piece of furniture right across from my impromptu set and fiddled with the display until the camera had a decent angle that captured the neutral wall and dresser. I then planned out my basic movements and script.

Even though I took improv class in high school and hated it (I was much more socially anxious back then), I’d watched enough Whose Line Is It Anyway? to get the general gist of making up lines as you go along (I highly recommend you put reading this post on pause and take time to watch that video, because it will make your afternoon that much more amazing). As long as I had a general plot premise, I could work from there. I pondered on the fact that I often have two dueling parts of my personality: the hard working, criticizing perfectionist that is often mentioned in these blog posts and the lazy-but-well-meaning half of me.

I also thought back to an assignment in my Digital Approaches to Fine Art class where we had to create a picture with different selves. One of my classmates, Alison, created a particularly humorous piece and described how the poses reflected the multiple elements of herself. The one entering the room was disappointed that the other two were slacking or goofing around.

I borrowed from this idea and decided the more disciplined side of me would walk in after a long day, mirroring the exhaustion I personally felt while filming this at 11:30 at night after waffles at the Underground (yes, they were absolutely worth the tiredness, if you’re wondering), and see her doppelgänger lounging around. She would question why the other wasn’t doing work considering she just worked her butt off all day, and a tiny argument would ensue but thankfully end in reconciliation and Cupcake Wars.

I first filmed the more responsible me walking in my door and tossing down my backpack to represent having just returned to the room. I inserted a couple of tired sighs for effect. Then, remembering that I set the camera on a lower angle to crop out a lot of the wall, I made the artistic decision that my selves would totally plop on the floor together and watch Netflix or chat. I took a seat next to my other self and began my sort-of-planned-out-lines. I questioned why my other self was still in her pajamas (the assignment required we change our hair and/or clothing), why she wasn’t working on her assigned two projects, lamented the thought of our GPA dropping due to her irresponsibility, and then refused a peace offering of chocolate (rare and blasphemous, I know, but it happens when I’m frustrated).

I played the silences by ear, imagining myself speaking out the matching lines. I kept my eye line straight ahead where I knew I would sit, and I was thankful I chose such a simple background. The general positioning and space wasn’t huge, and it wasn’t hard to make mental blocking marks. I didn’t have too much movement, thankfully, with the exception of my exasperated hand gestures and head movements, so staying in frame was no issue.

Then, I stood up and turned off the camera. I later edited this part out so that the video consisted only of my acting.

Now came the tricky part: how to film and time my matching scene. I knew that if I played any audio in the background, it would be picked up by the computer speakers and throw the whole project off, so I decided on this: I exported the iMovie file’s audio as an .aif file and added it to my iPhone! This way, I could have one headphone in and hear my other self say her lines and respond with appropriate timing while still appearing like I was listening.

But here’s when I made my simple mistake that made this project hell:

I moved the computer without marking where it originally was.

To plug in my phone, move around files, and other such activities, I moved my laptop and messed up the whole setting. I tried to eyeball the scenes and match the camera angle as best as possible, but as you can see in the finished product, the difference in height/focus was enough to cause major issue and even cut off my limbs at certain unintentionally funny moments. I was so frustrated, but it was 1am by that point, and I was so happy with the material I had recorded that I decided I would make the content work without having to re-film.

The second scene’s filming, to backtrack, went smoothly. I pulled on a pajama top and pants and tied my hair up to look like I hadn’t gotten dressed/cleaned up all day–which the character hadn’t–and sat down on the other side of the dresser from the first scene.

The audio-file-on-my-phone trick worked, and my timing matched up perfectly. My second self was much more laid back, apathetic at times, and far less worried than the first self. She didn’t understand the other’s anxiety (she has a few exasperatedly-look-into-the-camera/The Office moments) and offered sweets to calm her down, and her offer was snappily rejected. A bit exasperated, she finally realizes she didn’t make the wisest or fairest choices and promises she’ll work on her projects if her other self promises to relax and watch Cupcake Wars for a bit. The other, despite her frustration, is intrigued and agrees. The story ends happily.

I sat down to edit my videos thanks to this YouTube tutorial on how to use the Advanced Tools and Greenscreen option that I had no idea about in iMovie. Quickly, however, I realized something was off. The camera angles, as previously discussed, didn’t match up. I was so frustrated. For at least two more hours (the actual filming only took me roughly 30-40 minutes all together), I tinkered with coloring, saturating, levels, contrast, filters, anything to help ease the mismatch and pain my perfectionist self felt.

Nothing worked.

Insanely frustrated, I went to bed and vowed to work on the project in the morning, and in the middle of the night, I awoke and had an idea–why not try to edit separate frames? I then promptly fell back asleep–as one does after getting a great idea, of course.

In between classes, I tried to create transparent/edited frames in GIMP to edit out the mismatching background and just keep myself/character in the scene. It didn’t work.

The next night (this project had taken me three days so far, and I was beside myself with frustration), I discovered that cropping and zooming in on my selves cut out more of the background and made the uneven plane slightly less noticeable. Then, I fully decreased the saturation on both videos, heightened some contrast, and decided that this was the best it was going to get.

In hindsight, I probably could have saved myself a lot of grief and just re-filmed the thing, but I was too proud of what I originally had to toss it all. Ugh.

Anyway, hope you all enjoy the conversation between two Kaileys and have learned a little something about NOT MOVING THE DANG CAMERA AND/OR INVESTING IN A TRIPOD WHEN SHOOTING.

View Assignment Details

Guess that book! (No, it is not Dracula or Fight Club.)

View Assignment Details

As promised in my video assignment preparation post, one of my assignments for this week is the name that book Vine challenge!

Except, whoops, I kind of disobeyed: I didn’t actually make a Vine account. Here’s the thing: I love watching Vines when it’s 2am and I’m putting off getting a healthy night’s sleep (what college student doesn’t?), but I highly doubt I would use the Vine to create content myself after using the interface this one time. I don’t like to have unused social media accounts just collecting dust in the vast expanse of the Internet, because it looks irresponsible and lazy for me as a master of my own digital identity and feels cluttered. Also, abandoned accounts kind of depress me. Maybe that poor lil’ Vine account feels bad that it never gets used, anymore (I personify way too many things in my life–sorry)!

Anyway, I didn’t create a Vine account to make this video, so if I lose kudos for my digital tendencies, so be it. The hardest part of this assignment wasn’t the careful splicing and measuring of clips, anyway (without the ending shot, the clip is exactly 5.9 seconds long, because that 0.1 second would have been too much for me to drive myself crazy over capturing), but was the choosing of a book!

I didn’t want to do any of my already professed favorite books, because that would be too easy for my audience to guess. I wracked my brain trying to remember books that impacted me throughout adolescence and today, and most of them are either way too complex or a collection of pieces. Finally, I delved into the furthest reaches of my high school memory and traveled to ninth grade English class, and boom, from that British-and-American canon, I found my Guess-that-book!-book.

The response to this book is quite dichotomous: people are either moved or think it’s ridiculously pointless and whiny. I’m a member of the first camp but will be honest: the coming-of-age novel didn’t impact me when I was fourteen as much as it does now, and I’m likely to give it a re-read and appreciate it more in my 20s. The protagonist’s musings tug at my heartstrings, and I can certainly see where the main character is coming from with their point-of-view.

As for the clues I included in the video: the first is a symbol (I include links throughout this post to definitions for those of you who aren’t literature nerds like I am and probably wiped all English classes from your memory as soon as they were complete). I remember this symbol from the book very clearly, because in that ninth grade class, we had to choose something from the book and illustrate it. I chose this green dress that a minor character wears/carries.

Unfortunately, the lighting in my room isn’t fantastic and the green dress I have is a dark green versus a lighter green, but I tried to drape the dress across the chair to allow the viewer the best access to the material as possible. I actually tried a bunch of different positions in the room but decided that standing on a chair and trying to hold a dress up while simultaneously filming with a phone camera is a really easy way to break one’s leg, and broken bones weren’t a goal of mine for this week. Therefore, draping the dress across a piece of upright furniture versus laying it flat seemed like a great way to demonstrate what the clothing piece actually is while getting as much light illuminating the shade as possible.

The second clue is a type of bread (random, yes, but I didn’t want to make this assignment too easy!). I was visiting my grandparents one week, and I was at their dinner table and looked up and asked,

“Grandma, do you have any bread?”

She just kind of stared at me a moment before simply responding, “No, but I’ll be going shopping this week” (I’ve had quite a few interesting art projects this semester, and I think they’ve really just learned to stop questioning my random requests and outbursts at this point). My grandpa started laughing when I explained the situation (and he actually guessed the book right away–go Grandpa!), but I didn’t want them to have to spend any extra money on me.

Thus, later, while out shopping with them, I scuttled to the bakery section, pulled out my phone, and tried to ignore the weird glances tossed my way as I filmed bread. Yeah, that scene was literally as strange as it sounds. It was extra uncomfortable, too, because in order to get the name/label of the bread to show, I had to peel off some stickers and move them. I kept casting shifty glances to make sure no one thought I was, like, trying to steal bread or change bread prices or anything (and now that I think about it, “shifty glances” probably weren’t the best way of encouraging innocence).

Oddness aside, I captured a few seconds of bread and edited out the chatter of store-goers behind me in iMovie so that the viewer’s eye could focus only on the visual.

The final clue is a particularly famous motif/arc word from the book. I filmed the lower half of my face saying the word mostly because it was the weekend and I looked like a lazy mess but also because this encouraged the audience to view me not as myself, Kailey, but as a self-insert-able narrator or un-individualized protagonist (I just made up so many words in that sentence, wow). I tried to throw in a bit of acting, as well, to have the narrator’s disgusted, frustrated tone come out in the clip and even inserted a semi-frown there at the end.

Finally, after the viewer has watched the video and has some idea of the book, I made a final shot of one of my favorite, angst-y adolescent quotes from the book. That way, if the viewer is really stuck, they can search the quote and find the answer to the guessing game.

I know I’m not the only one who likes this book (one of my high school classmates actually got a line from the piece tattooed on her back), so comment and let me know if you can guess the literary work and if you enjoy it, as well!

View Assignment Details

2 seconds of beauty ft. Hope!

View Assignment Details

This weekend was a blast, and this is why: before I came to UMW, I spent my freshman year at Sweet Briar College in Amherst, VA; the institution has gorgeous grounds and wonderful faculty, but the overall size was a bit too small for my taste. Regardless, during my time there, I met some of my best friends. One of which is a firecracker of a young lady who was able to come and visit me here at UMW for a few days! She always puts a smile on my face and is truly a breath of fresh air–especially during this stressful almost-finals-time.

When we weren’t running around the city doing this-or-that, we decided we would try and get some homework done (spoiler: we did not get any homework done). She loves photography and has a very nice camera, and I mentioned the last video assignment I was working on for this week: one second of beauty. I suggested we go out and explore–well, as much exploring as is possible in this FINALLY freezing weather!–the area for pretty sights. That way, she could snap some pictures and I could grab some video to draw from later on my computer. She agreed. Inspired by one of the shots in the example used in the assignment description, I was thinking I would go the sunset/Golden Hour route and try to capture some fallen leaves and their colors.

On Saturday, the Bell-A-Cappella concert was showing on campus for free. My friend and I were in choir together while at Sweet Briar, so I figured it would be fun to take her to see the show. After running a few errands and grabbing some food, we headed to the auditorium for an musical treat!

I have seen Bell-A at least twice before thanks to their Halloween and Spring shows (the Halloween Crayola Crayon group costume was too clever), and I was fairly familiar with their new set. I did not expect, however, to see ds106’s very own Hope take the stage for her senior solo! She sang Hozier’s “Take Me to Church,” which is already a profoundly moving video and song. Now, I knew Hope was talented in the fields of graphics, writing, and general worth ethic (she was one of the wonderful members of my radio group!), but when she got up there and started belting out the song with her incredible alto, I was just about moved to tears. Truly, the song became about fifty million times more emotional, and I had shivers. My jaw dropped open, and my friend was equally impressed.

Forget nature and/or sunsets–I had found my beautiful moment in the music and song!

I quickly pulled out my phone and filmed as much of the performance as I could without disturbing the audience members behind me and decided I would pick and choose clips to edit later. I then put away my device to enjoy the rest of the concert.

Once back in my room, I had to watch the footage and choose only one second, and the process was brutal. After exploring some other students’ examples and finding a past blogger that created a short film comprised of various second long clips rather than a single second, I decided to go that route and settled on a particular moment when the group of singers swells into two gorgeous amens–kicked off by an equally gorgeous vocal run from Hope–and spliced the seconds together.

After much obsessive editing (thank goodness I’m already familiar with precision editing in GarageBand and can fairly easily transfer that perfectionism to iMovie) and mad copying and pasting (and lots of replaying the short video–my neighbors can deal. I’m sure they enjoyed hearing the lovely performance over and over again, anyway), I grabbed the beginning of the first amen and the end of the second; therefore, two seconds/two different amens spliced together completes the word and this too-short example of beauty.

If you haven’t already, check out more Bell-A-Cappella awesomeness on Twitter and Facebook, and make sure to come to their next show!