Check out my first  PSA from the BWA in the WIDOW organization! I made it in iMovie for one of our community news updates. I think its definitely worth 5 stars

Here is a 5 star video for you all about a day in my life. I made it by taking pictures and videos of some of the things I did today. It started out pretty average, but then I had to cut it short to take care of some business..cleaning… Anyway, I made it by adding all these pictures and clips into iMovie and then adding the song “Rhapsody in Blue” to it. I wanted to make this video just so you could have an idea what my days can be like. Rather than explain it to you, I’ll let you watch it and find out! -Edie

For one of my assignments this week, I chose to do the assignment, A word…a picture…a story, that was submitted by Kierra Morris.

The assignment is to, “Chose up to 5-10 words..just randomly pick them don’t over think it just chose these words out of the blue. Then do a Google image search on these images and chose one of the first visible photos for the word..after you have chosen your words and your images put them together in video form and tell a story..include a sentence with each image to help guide your story or try and tell it without the sentences.” This assignment is worth 3 points.

Here are the ten random words I came up with:

1. Dress
2. Sparkle
3. Marble
4. Coffee
5. Blanket
6. Piglets
7. Sun
8. Mirror
9. Curls
10. Book

I went on google and searched for images for all of the words. I saved them all to a folder on my desktop and then imported them into iMovie. I created a movie and then uploaded it to Vimeo! Enjoy

Here is the story:

Piglets wear dresses that sparkle in the sun. They walk on floors of marble and sloppily drink their coffee. At night, they snuggle under blankets. In the morning, they look in the mirror and admire the curls of their tails and then snuggle up with a good book!

Well, I was returning home from a long day of work the other day (I was taking care of the dogs I walk during the day), and it was fairly dark out. I’m usually not scared in these instances, but something felt eerie this evening. It seemed to me like someone was following me, so I started to pick up my pace. I put my head down in order to stay calm, but then I saw the shadow of what looked like Bev. 

I’ve been fearing this moment, and I know that Bev is not out to get me, but I was so startled I had to run. I’m not sure where she went — or if it even was her — because I sprinted it out of there as fast as I could. 

This video assignment was definitely something that I had fun with. I knew that it would be great for my character because fear and suspense is such a major aspect of noir film. I also loved having the chance to work with some urban landscape and unique usage of light and shadows here to throw in as much noir aesthetic as possible. 

Additionally, I liked the chance of working from a POV angle for this video. After reading about all the different type of film last week, I was itching to try out some different techniques, and I thought this worked best for a scary/suspenseful scene.

The final thing needed, of course, was suspenseful music. I found a great chase song on youtube, converted it to mp3, and threw it into my iMovie file. I then cut it down and moved it around so that the song’s suspenseful aspects and crescendos matched up well as it could to the actual scene. 

For my last video assignment this week, I wanted to do this one because I think it captured a lot of really important aspects of film that we’ve been studying and practicing these past two weeks. 

As I worked on my videos, I learned that film and specific scenes have a lot happening in a short time, yet still need a single theme to make the scene cohesive. Additionally, there needs to be recurring aspects that tie various scenes together. It is incorporating this aspect of design to video that really makes the story come to life.

After all my character assignments this week, I noticed a trend. The assignments were very different, but most of them tied back to the noir aesthetic, and my character’s story specifically. 

I thought this frame perfectly captured my character’s video journey because much of his story contains scenes in nighttime, dim light, outside, and with shadows. I definitely noticed this connection throughout all my videos this week, and I knew that this screencap perfectly captured the storyline I created with this collection of videos. 

Damon here. I decided to use this assignment opportunity to give a little peek into my work process. Now, obviously, my art takes much longer than 30 seconds. It usually takes hours, days, even years. You could even say some of my work is taking a lifetime, but I won’t get too far into that.

For this tutorial, I decided to just show you a quick sketch that I did to give an idea of how I work. I like to draw freehand – it ensures my art comes from passion rather than too much thought. I also like to use unique colors and shapes in order to set my pieces apart from others.

This video was not too hard to make, though it was pretty difficult to hold my camera while also sketching. However, I do like to challenge myself with my art, so I don’t mind the difficulty here. 

Well, I hope this helps give a little look into the most important part of my life. 

I caught up with myself this evening. Lately I’ve been feeling conflicted, as thought I’m not even able to speak to myself. I’m trying to work out everything that’s going on, but if I can’t even admit the truth to myself, how can I continue on?

Ever since Bev told me all that information, I’ve just felt confused — conflicted even. I’m not sure where to go next. I’ve always been on the run, but never quite so literally. Bev has really invaded my life, and the worse thing of all is that I never know when she’s going to show up.

I don’t know why I’m sharing this.. I guess since I couldn’t speak to myself I had to speak to someone. 

This assignment was a lot of fun, and I knew immediately that it would work perfectly for my character. Damon is definitely conflicted, so the idea of him having a conversation with himself was the perfect opportunity to get inside his head and take a closer look at the confusion and fear that exists there. 

Creating this video was not incredibly easy (I mean, it was a 5 star assignment!), but luckily I think I’ve really learned since my videos last week and I’m really starting to get a better feel of editing and playing with video.

I recorded each “Damon” separately, pausing between dialogue in order to give me ample editing room. I then placed the clips into iMovie, did some cutting and pasting, and threw on a black-and-white filter for some noir aesthetic. Honestly, the transitions could be smoother, but that’s something I’m working on figuring out, and for this scene at least I think the jumps work because it’s fairly representative of my character’s consciousness. 

This assignment was just to die for! As soon as I spotted the “Name that Book!” prompt, I knew that starting my own book club would come in handy one of these days, and today was that day! It states: For this assignment, use the app Vine to visually create a book title. Find objects, … Continue reading Guess What?!

So Pacific Rim is one of my favorite movies. Mainly because it’s the stupidest movie I’ve ever seen and I love every second of it.

If you haven’t seen it, shame on you. SHAME.

There’s no Victoire reference here at all. I just REALLY like this movie and am PUMPED that they are making another one.

I actually really tried to do this assignment justice- the point of the assignment is to take a trailer and make it look old.

The upload time to youtube ALONE shows, like, hella dedication.

…I really hope the work shows and that you guys like it.