For my first Digital story I used various images from a Harry Potter movie. It was difficult at first to find similar images with slight differences, but once I found images I used www.makeagif.com to create my digital story. Below is the link that will take you to the digital story.
My assignment was to make a gif from my favorite movie. My favorite movie of all time is Uptown Girls… I need to watch it again soon actually.
Uptown girls is a movie about a woman that needs to grow up and a kid that needs to learn how to have fun, and how they help each other understand the world. This gif is a few clips from the ending, a dance recital where Ray (Dakota Fanning, who I feel like grew up really quickly between this movie and twilight) does a dance dedicated to Molly (Brittany Murphy).
Some back story: Molly’s dad was a rock star that died in a plane crash. She had her inheritance stolen from her by a financial advisor and had to find a job, which was babysitting for Ray. Molly and Ray struggled to understand eachother from the start and Ray (the grown up little girl that she was) fired Molly. Molly then had to auction off all her fathers famous guitars, but with a change of heart Ray has Molly’s ex-Boyfriend buy the guitars to use in an “I’m sorry” performance done to a song Molly’s dad wrote for her. This is obviously the super short version of the story, but the part I like most is that Ray looks like she is having so much fun, finally! I love happy endings.
I made this gif by:
Voila! This is my GIF from the lovely movie “Mean Girls”. It is when Regina George gets hit by the bus. I choose this movie because it is honestly one of those movies that you can just quote and everyone would know where that quote came from (“You go, Glen Coco!”) I choose this scene specifically because the first time you watch it, it shocks you. To get this scene I went to Youtube and searched “Mean Girls”. I found a clip labeled “The Best of Regina George” and knew this would be in there. I downloaded it using MPEG Streamclip, as the tutorial on the DS106 page says to do, and clipped it using “select in” and “select out”. Then I saved it and took it to GIMP to edit it (I actually added a motion blur to this GIF). Honestly, the toughest part was downloading the software and figuring out how to make it “move” in my blog! For the I googled how to embed images in WordPress blogs and found the answer (you have to keep it full sized). And there it is!
Link to clip:
Link to tutorial:
http://ds106.us/wiki/index.php?title=Creating_Animated_GIFs_with_MPEG_Streamclip_and_GIMP
Link to WordPress on how to embed GIFs:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/images/
Scene: Dumbledore falling after Snape Kills him.
Movie: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
First off, I’d like to thank Jim Groom for his awesome tutorial which made the process of making a GIF go ever so smoothly. It was step-by-step with screenshots and links to all the cool software(Fastest Youtube Downloader, MPEG Streamclip, GIMP) to use. I would recommend everyone to check it out, whether you’re in DS106 or just making GIFs for fun!
As for my clip, not only is this one of my favorite movies, but it is from my favorite SERIES of movies. Harry Potter has been a part of my life since 1999 when The Prisoner of Azkaban book was released. As a young kid, I was drawn to the cool looking covers on J.K. Rowling’s novels and decided I should read the first book of the series, The Sorcerer’s Stone, before starting the third book! Well, who knew that 13 years later I would have read all 7 books in the series and watched the 8 movies hundreds of times? If you’re reading this, chances are, you are a part of the generation that has grown up with Harry Potter. If you haven’t read or seen the movies(like my parents), go ask a friend or go to your local library and check them out!
A short summary of the clip: Dumbledore is the Headmaster at Hogwarts(Principal of a magical school) and is the only thing standing in the way of Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters (the antagonist in the series and his followers) from killing off all non-magical beings in the World. Voldemort is weak(literally and figuratively) and assigns one of his followers, Draco Malfoy, to kill Dumbledore. When he chickens out, Professor Snape follows through with Voldemort’s orders and kills Dumbledore.
You’ll notice, I didn’t mention Harry Potter once in that summary. Want to know why the series has his name in the title? Go find out for yourself like I did! It will hopefully take you on an exciting adventure and encourage you to read/watch the whole series over and over again!
I had no clue what a GIF was before this assignment. At first I found this assignment extremely intimidating, but once reading Jim Groom’s tutorial on how to make a GIF a few times I felt like I was ready to give it a try. The first thing I did was download all the software I needed. I used YTD video downloader to download the clip from youtube. Then I used MPEG Streamclip to trim down the clip and provide a sequence of images. Finally I used GIMP to create my GIF by layering all of the images together.
This week’s digital storytelling assignment was to create a GIF from our favorite movie. At the moment, my favorite movie is Bridesmaids. The GIF above is the scene where Annie gets pulled over and does a little dance for the cop to prove she is not drunk. I thought it was kind of funny that instead of just doing his sobriety test she choose to dance for him and it actually worked.
The process of creating GIFs is pretty easy once you get the hang of it especially when you have a handy dandy tutorial to help you out along the way. After I made one I went straight back to make more!
Like this one!
This is the scene on the airplane on the way to Las Vegas. The evil Helen gives scared to death of flying, Annie an “anxiety pill” that gives Annie a ton of energy and she obnoxiously announces that she is ready to party. Annie outburst gets them kicked off the plane.
Annie is ready to party and now that I have made my GIFs, so am I!!
Our assignment this week was to create an animated gif image that showcased part of a favorite (or least favorite) movie. If this works, I’m going to build MYSELF a summer home on top of an ancient Peruvian village.
HOLY LLAMA FACE BATMAN, IT LIVES! IT LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVES!
And now I know how to make animated gifs. Aahaha. AAHAHAHA. AHAHAHAAHAHAH!!!
Beware, ds106. You have unleashed a monster.
I chose this particular scene from “The Emperor’s New Groove” because it perfectly sums up Kuzco’s character–self-absorbed, a little bit ridiculous and convinced he’s the coolest thing out there. Doot-doot-doodle-doodle-doot-doot-doo-doo, KUZCOTOPIA!
Below the gif I wanted to make originally. I used Jim Groom’s excellent gif-making tutorial for both of these. I had to cut this one down a bit because, for whatever reason, MPEG Streamclip gets all ornery if you try to export a clip that pushes the 1MG mark, at least on my laptop. Laaaaame. Still, I managed to create this wonderful gif from the iconic movie “The Iron Giant.” Meet Dean McCoppin, sexiest and most long-suffering animated character of the late 90′s:
Again, it sums up his character pretty nicely. Chill, down-to-earth, and completely unprepared for the barrage of insanity that’s about to overtake his life. If you grew up in the 90′s didn’t see “The Iron Giant” as a kid you had a deprived childhood. Deprived! Do yourself a favor and go see it. Just make sure you bring tissues for the last part of the film–it’s one of those “Oh God, where did these FEELINGS come from?!” movies.
This assignment was both more difficult and significantly easier than I’d at first assumed. The process itself was way simpler than I thought it would be, but again, I had some serious technical difficulties. Like I said earlier, MPEGStreamClip decided to get annoying on me and crashed a couple of times, and then outright refused to export the entire set of images I needed for the whole gif I wanted to create. I did really enjoy the fiddly bits though–finding the perfect moments to start and stop my gif, getting the timing right, fixing the size of the first one in GIMP. Those little details are things I could spend hours on–and did, actually! But it’s incredibly frustrating when the tools you’re working with aren’t reliable, which is proving to be the biggest issue with my ds106 work so far.
My Favorite Movie? Pan’s Labyrinth.
My Favorite Scene? The Pale Man; aka: The Baby Eater.
Isn’t he just adorable?!
I had never in my life made a GIF before, The tutorial made by Jim Groom helped so much. I downloaded GIMP (which I have used previously for photography) and StreamClip. I found both easy to use as I navigated my way through Mr. Groom’s tutorial. I will say, my Tumblr will be home to all sorts of new GIFs with this newfound knowledge.
Why did I choose Pan’s Labyrinth? Pan’s Labyrinth is absolutely one of the most intriguing movies I have ever watched. I could go on for hours about my love for Guillermo Del Toro (the director) and his awesome skills. Pan’s Labyrinth is a movie that is spoken in all Spanish with English subtitles. Del Toro wrote the subtitles himself to make the words flow as easily as they did in his head. A simplified version of the movie is as follows: Girl (Ofelia) loves fairy tales. Girl is also slightly delusional (workings of a small child’s imagination). Girl meets Fawn, Fawn says “BY GOLLY, YOU’RE A PRINCESS!”. She believes him. He explains that she must complete three tasks to prove that she is the lost princess Moana. She must, 1. Get the key from the belly of the toad. 2. Enter the lair of the Pale Man and retrieve the dagger, making sure as to not eat anything from the wonderful feast, and 3. She must shed the blood of an innocent. First task, no problem. Second task, not so much. Ofelia enters the lair of the Pale Man. She walks past a gigantic feast set out before this waxy looking creature. She sees wonderful pictures on the wall of the Pale Man eating babies. YUM. She uses the key that she retrieved from the belly of the toad to get the dagger. On her way out she spots some delicious grapes. Having skipped dinner, she grabs a couple. OH NO, she’s awoken the Pale Man. His eyeballs are on a plate in front of him, he has to physically insert them into his hands before placing his hands on his face to see. Even then his eyesight is spotty. Ofelia escapes the lair after a close encounter with the Pale Man. Task 3…. Well I can’t tell you that much more or it will ruin the end of the movie! It is a fantastic flick. I generally don’t like foreign films with subtitles, they sound very mechanical and fake. This movie however… flows. It’s fantastic. I would recommend it to anyone.
Here’s a link to the IMDB page for Pan’s Labyrinth: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0457430/
Making a gif proved to be one of the most frustrating things for me. For some reason or another I cannot grasp how to make one. I tried many online sources and all proved to fail me. I tried to find photoshop, but wasn’t willing to spend the money on it. I finally came across the tutorial (HERE) to make one. It took a few tries and after hours of work I thought I had finally gotten it down. Turns out, I can’t figure out how to make it move on this post, but if you click on the picture it will take you to my gif. I can’t seem to get it down perfectly, but I can say it definitely is not due to lack of effort on this project. If I can figure out how to make the perfect gif definitely expect an update!
On a happier note, I love the content of my gif!! Finding Neemo is possibly one of my favorite movies. It never gets old to me! I love the under-the-sea content of it. I feel every time I watch this movie I see something new! It’s such a colorful movie. The sea turtles are all time favorite characters. And it could be due to the fact that sea turtles are some of my favorite creatures or they make me laugh every time. Whatever it is I think they make a great gif! 
I decided to start off the week in a productive fashion by knocking out one of the harder assignments for the week. Before I start, I should mention that I love GIFs. I find them hilarious, but I’ve never tried to make my own. That was an ordeal to say the least. I learned that the MPEG Streaming software doesn’t allow for a large amount of frames, so I had to compress my clip down a whole lot more than I would have liked. From there it was fairly easy to import into GIMP and create it into a gif.
With that being said, I think the clip came out very well. A big thanks to the DS106 wiki which has a fantastic tutorial on how to create gifs here. It may take some trial and error to get a gif that works well, but it’s well worth it.
My first GIF!
This was a clip from my favorite movie ever, “The Big Lebowski,” a movie which is, by far, one of the most hilarious pieces of cinema ever. If you haven’t seen it, drop whatever your doing, make yourself a white russian, and go see the movie. The entire rant which leads to the confrontation above can be found here. Plan on seeing many more gifs from me in the coming months.
In other site news, I’m still fidgeting around with themes and widgets and the like and any creative input would be appreciated considering I am design impaired.
Oi, somehow I never published this post, my own answer to my own challenge. I just found it in my unpublished drafts drawer. Bad Dog.
The first rule of issuing challenges is be prepared to remix your own dog food. Thus I find myself tonight working at doing my own creation for the Seven Day Daily Create Challenge. You can see the whole series of related posts at http://cogdogblog.com/tag/7daychallengetdc
Okay, this is not easy. I scanned the 174 entries that came in (actually there are more now than when I summarized), and downloaded enough media I could use (I had to skip a few flickr photos that were not creative common licensed and some audio that were not set in SoundCloud to be downloaded). A theme somewhat emerged, like something bad that might happen if a flame was turned on somewhere in the world, that triggered a few catastrophic events… Here ya go:
This was assembled in about an hour’s worth of iMovie fiddling. I do a lot of splitting of clips, separating the audio tracks, and using multiple audio layers. I found there are audio effects you can apply to a video clip (that was new to me)
I ended up using three things by our long time ds106 Australia comrade, Rowan Peter- his two audio files and one flickr photo just jelled for me.
Dr Coop’s blue flame was the trigger, Melanie’s video for best technology with the flushing toilet got me started thinking about the world swirling down the drain, which leads to tornado swirls. Mayln’s boiling water was a nice build up to the triggering event (whatever that flame hit). Rowan’s recording of a Japanse telemarketing call seemed to be good backdrop for the mechanical parts of the world that might go into an infinite loop. Norm’s static video of for ds106 (along with his audio “just found a TV”) sounded like a post apocalyptic effort to communicate.
Rowan’s sounds of breathing made for the closing gasp[s over his own eerie desolate photo (natural scene lacking human artifacts)
Here are the media pieces I used:
cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by dr.coop
cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by Rowan Peter
I totally admit this was a hard assignment, but aren;t those the ones worth doing? So give it a try, you can do any 7 days worth on your own….
