The Work Itself 

This video assignment is titled “Sports Mashup“, its instructions are to “submit a video mashup of what you think are some of the greatest sports plays ever. What is the story it tells? This needs to be more than just a montage of clips, find a way to make it present a theme, an arc of ambition, a message about the moments.” It is rated 4/5 stars in terms of difficulty. I created a YouTube compilation video of game winning plays from this past year in the NCAAF, MLB, NFL, and NBA. My video is titled “We Won!“.

The Story Behind The Story 

Sports are fun to watch because no one knows what is going to happen at any point in time of a game. The results are unpredictable. I especially love game winning scores as time expires. It is very exciting, especially when the underdog team is on the winning side of it. I created this video of game winning plays to share with the public of everything they may have missed. Personally, I scored a game winning goal in my junior year in lacrosse. I remember the play and definitely the celebration like it was yesterday. It is one of my happiest memories, so I understand the emotions that these athletes feel when they win the game.

The Process, Narrated 

I cut and pasted several clips from numerous YouTube videos.  I downloaded the videos using http://en.savefrom.net/. I then opened iMove and loaded the videos I had just previously downloaded. In iMovie, I trimmed and edited the video to use only the portions I want. I did this by dragging the yellow bar to the left and right in the timeline. Right after, I clicked “TRIM” to complete the editing.In the video editor, because the video is edited, I simply just dragged it into the “insert video” section, created a title slide and that was it.  I saved the video, and shared it to YouTube. I uploaded it to my channel and published it to the public.  Below are a few photos to document my process. 

The Work Itself

This assignment is titled “What Do You Love?”. The instructions are to “choose something that you love and make a video of it! My assignment is titled “I love Food“, it can be found on my YouTube channel. You can take pictures or videos and combine them into one final video. Try to find music that has to do with the thing you love and add it to the video. Make sure to add a title and give credit to those outside sources!”. This assignment is rated 3.5/5 stars for difficulty. I created a YouTube video of various food images.

The Story Behind The Story

I love food, all types and sorts of food. I especially love breakfast. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. A good breakfast will result in a good morning, and it starts the day off a good note. A hobby of mine is cooking, and eating, mostly eating. I want to try different cuisines, because there are so many good foods that can be prepared in a multitude of ways. For example eggs can be prepared “sunny side up”, “over-easy”, “poached”, or “scrambled”, and the list goes on.

The Process, Narrated
I created a mental list of my favorite breakfast foods and drinks. I then googled each item, found an image and then downloaded each image. I then went into YouTube Video Editor and uploaded all my breakfast images. I dragged each photo individually to the editing bar. I created a text of the food to each image (i.e. “Eggs” for the image of eggs). I trimmed each photo to three seconds. I created a intro title slide and inserted text into it and trimmed it to 3.5 seconds. I then created a conclusion slide with text and trimmed that to 3.5 seconds as well. When the editing was completed, I published it to my channel. Here are a few photos documenting my process. 

The Work Itself 

This video assignment is titled “Favorite Actor/Actress Highlight Reel“. Its instructions are to “create a 30 to 60 second highlight reel of your most enjoyable movie scenes from your favorite Actor/Actress”. It is rated by the public 4/5 stars for difficulty. I created a YouTube video of my favorite scenes and clips of Will Ferrell and mashed them together to make a highlight reel. Will Ferrell is one of the funniest, and goofiest actors I have ever seen. My video is titled “Will Ferrell Highlights“, it is on my YouTube channel.

The Story Behind The Story 

Will Ferrell is one of the funniest actors of my time. Every movie of his is a comical. My favorite Will Ferrell movie is “Talladega Nights, The Ballad of Ricky Bobby“. There are so many great scenes and clips of Will Ferrell, so I wanted to a create a compilation of his funniest moments in television. If there ever becomes an award for most comical actor in the last decade or even century, then viewers will be inclined to nominate Will Ferrell after watching this video. I have seen almost every movie that Will Ferrel stars in, and have laughed at every film.

The Process, Narrated 

I cut and pasted several clips from a handful of Will Ferrell YouTube videos. I downloaded the videos using http://en.savefrom.net/. I then opened QuickTime Player and loaded the video I had just previously downloaded. In QuickTime, I trimmed the video to use only the portions I want. I did this by dragging the yellow bar to the left and right in the timeline. Right after, I clicked “TRIM” to complete the editing. I saved the video, and inserted it into YouTube video editor. In the video editor, because the video is edited, I simply just dragged it into the “insert video” section, created a title slide and that was it. I uploaded it to my channel and published it to the public. Here are some photos documenting the described process. 

The Work Itself

This assignment is titled “Highlight Reels”, its instructions ask to “channel your inner ESPN and clip together highlights of your favorite athlete, set it to some music, and add an intro.” It is rated 5/5 stars for difficulty. I created a YouTube video using individual clips from other YouTube videos. I created a highlight reel of Mike Tyson knockouts in his professional boxing career. I chose what I thought to be his best knockouts. By best I mean power, speed, and skill.  My title for the video is “Lights Out”, it can be found on my YouTube channel.

The Story Behind The Story

Mike Tyson was one of the greatest boxers of all time. In his prime he can be compared to Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Robinson, Joe Louis, Roberto Duran, and Floyd Mayweather in terms of talent, accomplishments, and greatness. Of his 50 wins, 44 came by way of knockout. He was bigger, stronger, and faster than anyone else in his weight class in his prime. He knocked out Trevor Berbick in the second round in November 1986 to become youngest heavyweight champion in history. He has been inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame and the World Boxing Hall of Fame. 

The Process, Narrated

I cut and pasted several clips from a handful of Mike Tyson boxing YouTube videos. I downloaded the videos using http://en.savefrom.net/. I then opened QuickTime Player and loaded the video I had just previously downloaded. In QuickTime, I trimmed the video to use only the portions I want. I did this by dragging the yellow bar to the left and right in the timeline. Right after, I clicked “TRIM” to complete the editing. I saved the video, and inserted it into YouTube video editor. In the video editor, because the video is edited, I simply just dragged it into the “insert video” section, created a title slide and that was it. I uploaded it to my channel and published it to the public.  Here a few photos that document my process. 

Lately it seems there’s no way for me to have any free-time to do something that I want to do. Of course, I do want to learn things in school, as well as write this novel, but I also want to play video games! I bought Undertale at the beginning of this week, and I haven’t even gotten a chance to even open it. To even look at the main menu. Anything!

I’m always berating myself, no matter what I’m doing. “Oh, you’re writing? You should be doing homework” and “Oh, you’re doing homework? You haven’t finished today’s word count” always go through my mind. It’s also accompanied by this constant need to play video games. I’m basically a Sim with the “gamer” trait, constantly tense from not being able to play games.

But, alas, school comes first. And for the required assignment this week, we had to make a film of us talking to ourselves. This was probably the most stressful assignment I have ever encountered, because, as a PC user who doesn’t make videos often, I had no way of completing the assignment the way it was suggested we do it. I have Windows Movie Maker and no green screen; there was no way I was going to create a masterpiece with the equipment I had. Oh, I tried, but it was not going to work.

So instead, we went the good ol’ route of films from before we had special effects and green screens! Cutting back and forth between myself and myself, filming little scenes separately. I tried to increase the difficulty for myself, adding in that part at the end where the camera cuts back and forth and I’m arguing with myself. But we’ll go into how I did that now.

Process:

So, I began by making a small script and then filming each part (by holding the camera in my hand). I then added all of those little videos into Windows Movie Maker, cut them up, and rearranged them into the correct place. I also did further editing to each clip, when there was excess silence around dialogue, so that it didn’t seem so odd.

Then came the difficult part of the back-and-forth fight scene. This required me to extract the audio from the specific clips, using Audio-Extracter.net. I then took these two audio clips, put them into Audacity, cut out any of the parts I didn’t need, and exported it.

Then I muted the audio of the scenes in Windows Movie Maker, put the new audio in, and deleted several inbetween scenes, so that the video and audio would kind of sync up.

Then I just added the title and credits, and that was it.

In a strange twist of fate, today marks the 1 year anniversary of the end of Over the Garden Wall! So I suppose it’s fitting that I chose to complete the Complete Package assignment (4.5 stars) by making a trailer for OTGW.

This show, even though it’s only a 10-episode mini-series, is absolutely phenomenal, and I hope that shows through in the trailer. I wanted to tease some things without giving anything away, because there are a lot of twists in every episode that will completely destroy how you perceive everything in the show.

I also purposely neglected including a title and credits sequence, even though I know we’re supposed to include these in these assignments, because of the nature of this assignment and the video in particular. It would just feel strange to have something like that around the video, so I’m taking creative liberties with it. But to be safe, all the clips and music and sounds are from the show, which belongs to Cartoon Network, etc. etc.

Anyway, I know I’ve talked extensively about Over the Garden Wall before in a previous post, and so there isn’t…too much I can say about it at this point that wouldn’t seem redundant or like I obsess over the show (which I do, but that’s beside the point). So I hope you enjoy the trailer, and maybe if you were on the fence about watching it, or have never heard of it before, it’ll make you want to see it.

Process:

This was, so far, the most complex assignment I completed. I wanted to mix up clips, and have some audio extend onto other clips.

So first, I went to Clip Converter, and downloaded various clips in both MP4 and MP3 files. Since it’s such a small series, and Cartoon Network has tons of important clips on their Youtube, it wasn’t too hard finding what clips I wanted to use.

Then it was just a matter of chopping up all the different clips, arranging them in a way that I liked, using the “Fade to Black” visual effect for most of them, and then layering the audio (some voice sections, some music, and then some more chopped-up voice sections) underneath.

It was basically using all the knowledge from before, but in a more complicated way.

This is my documentary for the week. You can find the assignment at http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/mini-documentary/.  While this was fun to make since I spent some extra time with Nate, It was challenging due to my lack of resources and some other things going on in my life this week.  I hope you like it.

Honestly, if it’s not clear from how many times I’ve said it, or the fact that I’m in the Creative Writing concentration: I love writing. I’ve loved writing ever since I was a tiny little elementary school kid. I had a binder with various poems that I had written, and it just grew from there.

In the fourth grade, I got the opportunity to participate in my school’s creative writing program. It was a private school, so it’s not like it was very prestigious or life-changing, but I did (technically) publish my first book. It was about an alien girl who was planning on going to prom, but got trapped in some strange world, and had to defeat the bad guy so she could get back to her prom date. It had little clipart pictures and everything. I even remember who my main character looked like!:

We bound them in little books, with hard covers. Just small little booklets. But it’s technically the first thing I’ve ever published, and though I’m not sure I have it anymore, I still adored it. From them on, although I may have wavered a bit, my only goal in life was to become a writer. I want to create worlds, humans and creatures that feel, to make readers feel along with them! It’s so important to me to be able to write.

Especially now, in November, it feels like all I’m doing is writing. I’ve written 30,000 words in the past six days, not including school assignments! And I love it. I love the way a story flows and carries you. The way these worlds unfold in front of me, and all I have to do is write it out.

For the What do you love? assignment (4 stars), I decided to go with writing as what I truly love in life. I wanted to set the video to Syd Matters’ “Obstacles”, because that (and the rest of the Life is Strange: Episode 1 soundtrack) has been the background music for all my writing sessions so far. Not to mention, the song in particular conjures up ideas of adventure and being young and making stories. Also I just love the way it sounds (aesthetics are important to me in every art form).

I used a variety of different pictures. Most of them are just from a google image search of “writing gifs” (although they unfortunately don’t appear as gifs in the video). You can probably tell the ones from Whisper of the Heart, a movie about writing that speaks to me on so many different levels. There are a couple of my own pictures, like the ones of my NaNo word count right before and after I hit the halfway mark on 11/5/2015, a cup of tea, my tendinitis-ridden wrist that’s not getting any rest. I’ve also included little blurbs from various stories and drabbles that I’ve written that I’ve really liked. And the video sections are all just me working on my novel.

Process:

I used the knowledge from my last three assignments all combined together, using techniques like speeding up the video sections, adding images and video and music, all that wonderful stuff.

The most difficult part was just cutting the videos as it aligned with the music, and moving all the images around until they were where I wanted them to be. Aside from that, a fairly easy assignment!