For this assignment, I chose to do a 30-second documentary on the life of a computer science major since I am a computer science major and therefore pretty authoritative on the subject. Going by the assignment’s description of “show, don’t tell,” I showed what it’s like to code all. the. time.

So, let me tell you a little bit about majoring in computer science at UMW. The department is small, consisting of about six professors at the moment. There are two tracks, traditional and computer information systems. (Don’t even get me started on that debate.) The track I chose was computer information systems. Basically, instead of the really hard computer science classes, I get to take business classes and I’ll end up making pretty much the same thing as traditional, career-wise. Majoring in computer science requires a lot of coding, spending time in that black-backgrounded command-line environment, thinking like a computer, trying to make computers think like a person.

Aside from the hard-work side of things, computer science is loads of fun. You get to create social networking sites, make games, write software. The thing I like most about my major is that I’m making real things. A real, functioning social networking website, software that can be used in the real world, things like that. It’s so satisfying to see all your hard work paying off. It’s not like some other major where you write a paper, turn it in, and all you have to show for it is your extensive working knowledge of some obscure topic and a letter grade (no offense). You work and you code and then you have something like this* to show for it.

*Not entirely sure if that’s a working link as the wifi I’m currently connected to won’t allow me to access the UMW Rosemary server…I’ll edit accordingly once I can check.

The making of this video took a few steps. First, I had to download Movavi’s Screen Capture Studio to record my laptop screen while I typed. Next, I put together the names from the opening credits of The Social Network. I then had to type it out perfectly while capturing my screen. Finally, I edited it all together, added a little background music (In Motion from the movie’s soundtrack), and done!

The hardest part of the whole process was typing the credits out. The whole time I was typing, all I could think was, “Don’t. Mess. Up. Don’t mess up. Don’t mess up.” Luckily, it only took a couple of takes for me to type it all perfectly at once.

When I saw this assignment, The Social Network popped into my head immediately. That’s mainly because pretty much anything can make The Social Network pop into my head immediately. However, I thought the perfect way to redo the opening credits while staying true to the film was to embrace the coding aspect of it and use command-line and back it all up with a track off the movie score. It may look simple and sort of boring, but the command-line environment is where programmers thrive. In a way, the seemingly blandness of the whole thing is misunderstood by outsiders the way Mark Zuckerberg was misunderstood in the movie. (How’s that for a tie-in?)

Man·ic pix·ie dream girl n.

A stock character in films; “that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures”

Zooey Deschanel is the epitome of manic pixie dream girl, and her big, blue eyes are the epitome of her mpdg-ness. I absolutely adore her. For this assignment, I chose five one-second clips of Zooey that draw attention to her eyes. The clips are from the following movies, listed in order: Failure to Launch, Yes Man, The Go-Getter, (500) Days of Summer, and Gigantic. I recommend watching all of these movies, which goes without saying.

The assignment itself was easy enough to do, catching one-second blinks from different movie clips. I edited the clips together using Windows Movie Maker 2.6, muted the clips, then added an audio clip from She & Him’s cover of I Put a Spell on You as sung by Zooey Deschanel.

Learn how to use an elevator with this instructional video!

Creating this video began with an idea. This idea came to me while sitting in the Trinkle basement at a table right next to the elevator.

After idea conception came idea execution. This stage of the process required my iPhone camera, a friend, and the ability to not care about being ridiculous. Keelin helped me with this part by filming me using the elevator and going down the stairs. Not gonna lie, probably the most fun stage of this assignment.

Now comes the part where I completely failed at everything. Upon realizing I had no idea how to use iMovie on a MacBook, I began converting the .mov files to .avi files. I was at a friend’s place at the time and wasn’t paying attention (which becomes obvious in a moment), hanging out and converting away in the background. As it turns out, I spent two hours converting the .mov files to, you guessed it, .mov files, followed by accidentally deleting all the files off the MacBook and my USB drive. Luckily, I had the files on my other laptop so hope was not lost.

Upon arriving home, I converted the files properly and downloaded Windows Movie Maker 2.6 because the newest version, to put it bluntly, sucks. I then imported the successfully converted .avi files into WMM and began editing.

For the titles, I used the Typewriter animation, Narkism font, and the Film Age, Older effect. For the video clips, I used the Film Age, Old effect and Slow Down, Half for some of them as well. I stuck my logo in the beginning (Film Age, Oldest yo). Finally, I grayscaled the whole thing, added a little background music (Fig Leaf Rag – distressed from Incompetech), and video editing was done.

Then came saving the video, uploading it to YouTube, and making this blog post right here. Ta-da!

Also, if you watch closely, you’ll realize the “desired floor” isn’t consistent in the video…whoops!

(5 star assignment)  I actually had this assignment done for a little while, however I could not find the time to write my post about it until now. I had a little trouble with this assignment as Windows Live Movie Maker decided it wanted to randomly say the files I was working with wouldnt work and practically destroyed my entire assignment. This made me very unwilling to go back and finish it. However, in tonights class a student mentioned the program Videopad and how it made it very easy. With the new information, I downloaded it and redid my assignment.

I took the trailer from The Hobbit and imported it into Video pad in order to get the “old film” effect. I exported it, then imported it into Movie Maker and put the finishing touches on it with the text cards.

Unfortunate Youtubes copyright laws have it out for me so the majority of my videos will be uploaded to vimeo from now on.

http://youtu.be/kuGv_uwANzg

heres the link to my video assignment 442, where you show 3-5 movie scenes and talk about how they changed your life or left an impression on you.  Youtube wouldn’t let me get the embed link form so this url is the next best thing.  I used iMovie to voice over scenes of four of my favorite movies/shows and explain their importance to me. enjoy before youtube takes it down.

“Your video settings could not be saved: Failed to change the license of this video. Videos with a third-party copyright claim cannot have a Creative Commons license.” -youtube

“embedding disabled by request” -youtube

this is my video essay on the dark knight.  I think this may be the only movie I’ve seen in theaters more then once.  The editing for this project was pretty challenging because I wrote out the script in advance so timing the clips to the audio of the essay was a little challenging considering the length and variety of scenes i wanted to include.