Ever since I was a little girl, I have been blessed with an incredibly sharp memory. This has come in handy for many things throughout my life, but the most surprising way that it shows up is in my ability to memorize music lyrics. This isn’t a very odd gift when you consider that most people you encounter can rattle off the lyrics to their favorite song pretty easily. However, for me it’s not just my favorite songs that I know, it’s every song I’ve ever heard – literally. After hearing a song two times, I have found that I usually have about 90% of the lyrics down. By the third time I’ever heard it, I can recall 100% of the lyrics and even recall every intonation and emotional aspect in the words of the song. Many people call this my secret superpower, and I do, too. But I also consider it a curse when it comes to songs I don’t like, because I unintentionally memorize those, too. After browsing through pages and pages of this week’s DS106 Video assignments and not really seeing any that struck my fancy, I finally encountered  a lip-sync one that was right down my alley. Behold! My gift and my curse. The password is singingsia. To view the original music video, click here.

Special Features:

How?: This video of me singing was created through the use of Screencastify Lite which is a Google Chrome extension that uses your computer webcam to record video. The video was shot in webm formatting, so I used Video Grabber, an online video converter, to format it as an mp4. Then, I uploaded both my video and the song separately to an online video tool called WeVideo. After perfectly aligning the song to my lips, I compressed and downloaded the video file and uploaded it to Vimeo for all to enjoy.

Why?: This has been a really hard week for me emotionally. Many things in my job and my relationship came to a head simultaneously thus preventing me from being in a good place to complete my assignments on time this week. I chose Sia’s song Chandelier specifically because the raw emotional sound of the song communicates exactly how I’ve felt all week. It also happens to be one of my favorite songs. Sia is also a marvelous storyteller in her music videos and I highly encourage you to check out more of her material.

The full assignment is linked and listed in its entirety below:

Where is somewhere that you have always dreamed of going? I really like travelling, and I often think about where I would go if I had all the money in the world. Do a video montage of images and/or video of the places that you would like to go, and add music that is native to the that area or just something fun.

This assignment is worth 4 stars.

I created this assignment using iMovie. I opened the app on my computer and created a new project. I gathered the images and video clips for this project from Google, YouTube, and pictures I have taken on my iPhone. I saved all the pieces for this project onto my desktop so they were easy to find and upload to iMovie.

Credit for video of UMW can be found here. 

To cut clips of the video that I wanted to use, I used QuickTime Player to record the portion of my screen with the video playing. The clips were saved and uploaded to iMovie as well.

Once all of the pieces were uploaded into iMovie, I rearranged the images into the format I wanted for the video. I added a title and end slide using the title tab and dragging down into the storyboard. You can click the top right image to type desired title onto the slide directly.

When the title was added, you can adjust many features. Font, color, size, and background can all be changed for your design.

When adding the pictures into the storyboard, transitions can be adjusted to each slide individually. This ensures that you are scanning to see the entire photo or fading in and out how you desire. Transitions are found in the top menu bar.

When adding the transitions and effects to a picture, you can change the start and end screen for the effect.

Audio tab was clicked in the top menu bar and a song was chosen from iTunes. I dragged the song down from the list into the bottom of the storyboard. Song could fade in or out, be clipped shorter or longer, and cut certain sections out all by clicking or dragging over the green bar.

Video was uploaded directly to vimeo from iMovie by going to File, Share. Here is my final product!

For this Video Assignment, you have to choose a video, then pick a piece of the video to slow down. This creates an Instant Replay effect! The assignment is worth 4 stars. To start, I found the video I wanted to use on Youtube. 

I then uploaded the video to this video converter website and uploaded it to my computer as an .mp4 file.

I used the movie editor IMovie to create my instant replay. I moved the file into IMovie then cut out the parts of the video I did not want to use my using the “cut” tool. Next, select the part of the video you want to Instant Replay, then go to “Modify-Instant Replay-25%.” Sit back and watch the magic!

Export the video by clicking the button in the top left of the screen:

I uploaded my video to Youtube. Good Luck!

I did the Moving Object assignment again just because I wanted another reason to use Vine and because I like the spooky effect it makes. Here is a key that appears to Paige to unlock a lot of secrets. Next up: the final project! So tune in!

So this tutorial will be similar to the one I did before, since this is my second time doing the Vine assignment.

First, of course, bring up Vine. Click the little camera next to the three dots in the top right corner.

Next, just hold your finger down to record whatever you want.

Save and upload it to Vine! Then on your laptop you can go to Vine and save your creation there.

Signing Words was a pretty straightforward assignment. I myself tried so desperately to learn how to sign these words but when it took me 45 minutes just to remember the first two (and shortest) words I reached out to my sister. My sister likes to learn languages for fun, and sign language just so happens to be one of the few languages she is learning on Duolingo (something like that). And since the assignment said “take a video of yourself or someone else” to finger spell some words, I figured why not ask for help? Even if it involves swallowing my pride to let my 11 year old sister help me.

So another main character of my final project story is the old lady, Mary. Mary is deaf so she knows sign language and signs out what my sister here signed. Can you guess what it is? If not, stay tuned to my final final project! The story will reveal all!

First I simply opened up my Movie Maker app that came with my laptop.

Then I had my sister take my place, showed her how to record and stop, and left the room so she wasn’t nervous.

She signed out the words and then I saved and uploaded the video to here!