Me: Well, Mom, it is saying the print spooler is offline.
Mom: What the hell does that mean? You know I don’t use computers like you, your brother and your Father! I just want to print!
Me: Well you have to turn the print spooler on.
Mom: …And how do I do that?
Me: Here, let me show you.
Mom: Write down the steps so I can do it when you go away to school!
Me: Alright.

….Yet, somehow, that piece of paper has gone missing and I STILL get asked to help fix the computer! Well, I have my final solution…A video to show her how to fix the spooler so she can print! It will forever be on the internet and my YouTube, but I was also sure to send her a copy as well!(Since I know she will never go ON YouTube lol)

So this video assignment is called Make a Tutorial for you Mom. So minus the ‘you’ not being ‘your’, it is pretty self-explanatory! Right…? So to begin, I had NO idea how to record a screen capture so that I could share my screen with video. (TGFG – Thank Goodness For Google) I stumbled onto this gem called Camtasia. It is a video editing software that will also let you record your screen for sharing! It is not free, but I did get a free 30-day trial which was more than enough! Recording my screen was the easy part. But that is okay, because TechSmith(creators of Camtasia) have a lot of tutorial video to help with editing. So of course I took advantage of learning how to zoom to specific parts of the screen, creating title and credits, and eventually placing my audio. I did NOT find this program as user-friendly as Windows Movie Maker, but I forged through. I again recorded my audio in Audacity, exported it as MP3 and opened it into Camtasia.

So, Mom, are you ready for the last tutorial on how to fix the print spooler? Good.

Silent Era

This assignment was to take a modern movie clip and revert it to an old silent film.

Once again, the outcome of my christmas mood. What funnier movie for being in the Christmas spirit then ELF! My roommate and I had just watched this movie several days before, so that’s probably why it came to mind. Elf is a funny movie just for the silliness that  characterizes Buddy.  There were not very many clips available online for this movie. So, it narrowed down what I could us.  I searched through youtube and found a scene from elf that would still seem to have a plot without sound.

I choose the scene where Buddy, the elf, meets his dad for the first time. He has just come from the North Pole where he discovered he was not an elf but a human. And now he is in New York to meet his real dad. But…he’s dad has no idea he had buddy. So, as buddy walks into he’s fathers office dressed as an Elf everyone is confused. They think buddy has dressed and been sent as a “Christmas Gram” to sing for the office.

After finding it on Youtube, i used PwnYouTube to download the clip as an MP4.

Then, I opened the scene in Imovie where i could edit it. First, i fiddled around to find out how to convert the film into black and white. Once in black and white I then had to create cues.  I saved a background used by professor Alan on his blog . Then, I opened this photo in Gimp. I then made a powerpoint with the words i wanted to put in my cue. After saving the powerpoint as a picture, I opened it as a layer on top of my background photo.

I did this process several times and then inserted the photos into the film.

After the motion part was complete, I canceled out the normal sound on the film. Then, I added a song from my itunes.

Walahh!! Elf as a classic,silent, black and white,  old school film

The goal of this assignment was to give a short play by play of an everyday activity.  Well as most of you know by now, I love football and I love the redskins so I knew I wanted to do a play by play of the skins game.  Unfortunately, they were on by last week so I had to wait until this Sunday to do the assignment.  My roommate is a Giants fan so we always mess with eachother during the games, but we killed the Eagles this week so it was a great game to watch.  I often do some joke play by play during games so this was not anything different than usual for me.  I think I’m a regular Al Michaels, what do you think?  Don’t be surprised if you see me in the Super Bowl booth in February. 31-6 baby

My first video assignment for this week was the What Do Pets Think About? The assignment asked for us to create a video where the animal looks like it’s thinking, then narrate what they were thinking. I threw a little spin on this. I decided to narrate what my girlfriend’s dog was thinking, but I did it while I was playing with him. My girlfriend SWEARS that he is a smart dog…but I beg to differ. I think he’s gotten goofy with old age(and may be a little slow). So although I pick on him, he is a sweet dog…and perfect for my narration of what he was thinking about!

I chose to do this video because I thought it would be a good way to ease into video editing. The programs I used were Windows Movie Maker(WMM) and Audacity. I also had to borrow my girlfriend’s video camera…and her dog…and her house…WOW, am I a mooch? I guess it’s a fair tradeoff because she loves reading my blog and seeing what I create Anyways, I took a couple videos of her dog, Moe, doing random things. I then uploaded the video to my computer and opened them right into WMM. In WMM I began by editing the video volume and turned it all the way down so I could do my voiceovers. I don’t know if it was possible to record audio in WMM, but I knew Audacity could, so I went with what I knew best. I recorded my audio in Audacity, and made sure it went along with the video. Exported my audio as an MP3 and then clicked the add song feature in WMM. BAM, my insight on what Moe is thinking! I also found that it was fairly simple to create title slides and credit slides with WMM.

The goal of this assignment was to pick a theme, and find 5 movie scenes that go with it.  I know it was only supposed to 5 seconds, but I it was really hard to get the point of each video with just 1 second clips.  The movies I chose, in order, are “The Dark Night Rises”, “The Princess Bride”, “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”, “Army of Darkness”, and “A  Knights Tale”.  The scene from Dark Night Rises is kind of a typical Batman scene, him standing on top of a high building overlooking the city as its protector.  I just thought it was a cool scene to start off the montage.  The second is Inigo Montoya’s classic line from Princess Bride.  I think that just about everyone knows this line and it was the first scene I thought of when I looked at the assignment.  The third scene is the very popular “Its just a flesh wound” from Monty Python.  I thought it was a perfect scene to follow Inigo Montoya’s death threat, plus its just funny.  The fourth scene was from Army of Darkness.  Ashe used his shotgun to break the Prince’s sword and all the citizens of the castle are in shock of its power.  I’ve always thought it was hysterical.  The final scene was from A Knights Tale.  Although the part I chose was not Heath Ledger himself, I thought it was absolutely perfect to follow the boom stick line.  The biggest problem I had with this assignment was just formatting everything correctly, I’m still having trouble with scaling the clips themselves.  I enjoyed this assignment because it really made me want to watch these movies over again

This was one of my favorite assignments all year.  I am one of those people that always sings in the car to songs, even if I don’t know them that well.  When I’m by myself I generally do it like this, because I think its really funny.  I also love to irritate my friends with my singing.  I chose the song “Honey Bee” by Blake Shelton because that is my girlfriend’s and my song.  I hope she likes my version of it!  Feel free to sign me to a record deal, I’m still deciding which company I want

This one was really fun.  It made me think of that mime act where he is smiling and moves his hand in front of his face then he’s frowning.  I just thought it was fun to be really dramatic with my emotions.  I hope you guys like my no shave November beard