One assignment we had to do this week was the Recycle the Media. This assignment did not count towards our six stars of mashup/remix that we need for these two weeks.

A couple of weeks ago, each DSer had to submit three pieces of media that they had but never used for assignments. The task at hand was the take five pieces of the media on this site and mash them up so they tell a story.

When I first got to the site, I was surprised at how many pieces we had that were never used! And they were good…I wonder why these pieces got the boot? It’s like the island of misfit toys. How sad.

I looked through the collection for some pieces of media that atleast looked like they went together. I thought that if they were similar enough, I would be able to turn them into a coherent story.

And I edited them with Windows Movie Maker. It was a very simple process. I downloaded all of the media pictures and an audio file that I wanted to my computer. I imported them in Windows Movie Maker. I added a title page and credits and viola! Here is my finished product:

The story arc goes a little something like this: a young girl attended UMW. She thought she could never graduate but eventually…she did! That night after graduation, she was going out with all of her friends to celebrate. She had a lot of choices to make but for the first time, they weren’t academic choices…they were shoe choices.

This assignment was fun to do. I’m still shocked at the number of “misfit” media pieces on the islanDS. {<see what I did there? ;)}

Blog post title: Island of Misfit Toys – Rudolph

One tool that was suggested to us when remixing and mash-uping was Mozilla Popcorn Maker. In order to experiment with this, Alan created a video for us to remix. He left spaces open where we could add new media. Here is the video:

Yeah. I know, funny.

I was kind of scared to remix this video. When I first watched it, I saw the open spaces where he alotted us to add media and I was worried scared intimidated. AHHHH.

The Popcorn Maker made this intimidation feeling a little better. It took a while to get used to it because I had never used it before. It said I was missing a flash player but I always just ignore those information pop-ups. However, when I added media, Alan’s clips’ timing would be off. I installed my missing flash player.

Even after I conformed and installed my flash player, it seemed a little complicated trying to piece all of the objects together. I wanted it to flow well. Maybe it was just the way this assignment was laid out. It didn’t seem realistic to me {although a trip to the sun isn’t!} because it. If you want to know what I’m talking about, watch my finished product:

I created a lot of the pictures by editing them so that they would be more realistic. For example, I took a screenshot of the final grade screen on the original video and typed in my text. I overlayed the pictures with the videos. It took a lot of trial and error! A. LOT.

I got the sun video from YouTube. This is the video that I play at the end on the vacation clip. I got this song clip from SoundCloud:

I was trying to make this vacation video funny {aka – why I chose the sun to be the destination!} I think this was a great assignment to do for a remix tester. I got to test out the water and practice remixing. I will say that I’m going to try another editor for future remix/mashup assignments because this one seemed to take a lot of my patience {and I’m working with pre-kindergarten kids today so that’s not good}. It always took so long to load…and still does even now that it’s done. So sorry if you are waiting for a super duper long time for it to load. I did like how I could change and add to a video with my own work. I can see how this tool is liked by people when they are remixing/mashing things up.

The story that this *new* video tells is an interesting one. Alan said he wanted a vacation because this semester was rough… and boy, did he get one. I hope he also packed his sunscreen! I hear the UV-B rays and the risk for skin cancer is crazy high when you stay on the Sun!

Thank you for booking your vacation with Runner Bug Destinations: If it’s your destination, we will run you right there!

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Blog post title: The Sweet Escape – Gwen Stefani