So for my second video assignment for the week I decided to create a “Where do you want to go” (3 stars) video which is a video made up of pictures of a place that you would like to (or are planning to) go. I chose this assignment as one that I could incorporate Lawrence and Victoire in so here is the backstory.
Lawrence is falling very hard for Victoire and she barely wants to give him the time of day. He has never felt this way before and he feels that she could change the man he has been for quite some time now. His behavior, his attitude, everything about him is changing…even his view on women. He decided he wanted to do something nice for her so he planned a surprise trip to Eagle Beach, Aruba for her. He thought the beach would be a nice place to get to know each other better and have some alone time away from all the stresses of work and what not so he took time to do this for her. It’s a beautiful place and he hopes that it will maybe sway her mind about him.
I chose to do this assignment because I like making videos like this. I like combining a bunch of pictures and putting them to some background music as a slide show. I especially liked doing this one because I’m a HUGE fan of the beach and I would absolutely love to go somewhere like Aruba. For now, I’m settling for Florida but I definitely want to visit as many beaches as I can in my lifetime.
For this assignment Where do you want to go? I would love to and have dreamed about going to Ireland. I just did a bucket list for my friends Inter Varsity activity and my first thing was to travel the world and most importantly go to Ireland first! I am Irish and most of my family from my dads side were born there and just knowing that much makes me want to go and visit so much more. Not only would it be awesome to go to Ireland to learn about my family it is BEAUTIFUL! When I was doing this assignment and looked up photos of this place I fell in love even more than I already was, I knew it was pretty but this place is breathtaking.
For this project I first went onto Google to look up the photos to use for the video, and then I went onto Youtube to find music that fit with my location. Once I got those items; 8 photos and one song, I had to find a website to make my video and put it all together. I found a website called Stupeflix Video and then I put it all together so I hope you enjoy
Oh the things we wish we knew then that we know now! To be able to go back and do things differently!
I chose this assignment (4 Stars) because I liked the idea of being of to look back and tell myself what I wish someone would have told me then! I originally thought this couldn’t be an assignment I could come up with but then once I started it went on and on. I was very surprised.
It clearly said this could be done via video or audio either one so I chose the audio because I hate seeing myself in video’s and pictures!
I pretty much covered the things I would try a different way if I had it all to do over again! Thanks for the opportunity to reflect back!
Oh my god this assignment took FOREVER. I wanted to just fall the hell over when I was done. It required us to create a lyric video for a song and my stupid self chose a 5 minute song. That 5 minute song turned into 3 hours of editing and frustration and I was just like pwnodnw. But, I got it done and I’m really happy with the result. I didn’t want to do the typical static image and changing lyrics because that would have been too boring. So, I decided on different videos that (kind of) went together. The video turned out a lot better than I thought it would and it’s really good for my first. Check it out.
I chose option 1 to do 8 stars of video assignments with 4 being attributed to my character and another character from the class.
So for my first video assignment for the week I chose to create a lyric video (3 stars).
I decided to sort of connect this with our radio show which airs tomorrow night at 9 because I felt that this assignment would make that possible. When Lawrence first met Victoria, she was singing at the diner that he was eating at and as soon as she started singing, Lawrence knew he wanted her. I chose “Say Something” because it’s a slow love song that, to me, would be sung in a little diner at night. The song (sung in this version by Ella Henderson) really shows off her voice and in our show it says Lawrence heard “the voice of an angel” which is just what you hear with this song. The lyrics are also very meaningful, especially if Victoria was singing them with experience (experience with pain in a relationship and wanting more, I mean).
I think this song is also how Lawrence leaves his women. He leaves and doesn’t speak another word to them while the women are falling for him and trying to get him back. The women are thinking, “say something, I’m giving up on you.” It’s a great song and i think it fits well with Lawrence and Victoria’s situation.
This is for the Surreal Panorama visual assignment. The idea was to create one of those panoramas that don’t really make sense that you sometimes get from a smartphone picture. But instead of just taking one, you make one up yourself. So I decided to create a panorama of two places, one nested within the other. This worked out great for my noir character since I could use the tears between worlds that exist within his universe. I used a picture of a New York street, and placed a house within it. The house is the one Brenda uses as the background of her website, and for the purpose of melding our characters’ stories, I like to think of it as the home of her character, Isabelle “Red” McIntosh. The house is visible through a “flash”, a side effect and smaller version of the Puncture. Flashes occasionally occur in Sardic’s New York, blurring the lines between realities temporarily.
For my final assignment this week, I wanted to get a bit creative. I chose to have a conversation with myself for 5 points. I brought some wigs from home, and I was aching to put them to use. Looking through the character dossiers, I saw Sarah Mustard. Where had I seen this name before? Oh, that’s right.
I have a massive crush on her.
I was also able to do a video this week because #bestbae was visiting. He’s a huge film nerd and helped me troubleshoot. Without him, I probably definitely would have thrown my laptop out a window.
First, I wrote the script out. I wanted it to be funny, because noir is still a joke. Let’s be real. What’s a problem that Delia would go to a PI for? Missing food. More specifically- missing bananas. Oh the humanity. I just let my absurdity run amok here.
After that, I got dressed as Sarah Mustard. Neutral colors, practical cuts, dark hair, check check and check. Peter helped me shoot because I wasn’t about to have a video shot entirely in selfies. What is this, snapchat? We used my iPad because it had a decent camera and the ITCC was too far away to walk to. A whole quarter mile.
I changed into Delia and did that makeup. I had to change her hair a bit to make the character more distinguishable, but I think the short blond hair works too. It’s very femme fatale-y
We then uploaded all of these videos, and put them into iMovie. Editing was the biggest challenge here. The actual process isn’t very difficult- put clips in order for a rough cut, clip them, add music and sound effects, make everything look and sound good. I also put things in black and white. Peter showed me how to do b-roll, layer audio in videos, and generally make iMovie behave. He is credited as Best Bae. All of the audio came from iMovie (except my voice, of course).
This assignment was a pain. I don’t even know if I did it the way it was intended, but I like the film that resulted. It was a lot of work. Watching yourself act is pretty cringe-worthy. I’m glad I did it, though. I really like the end product, I think it looks good, sounds good, and has plenty of jokes.
Visualize a blog post, TED Talk, Class lecture or even dense text from a book- through drawing. Use the pictures to symbolically represent & concretize abstract concepts, and to make connections between ideas. Try to use words sparingly and only to reinforce your imagery.
Doodle it in your notebook, use your tablet, or scribble it on the back of a napkin. Just be sure to digitize it and then blog about the process, including citing where your inspiration came from.
I decided to follow another ds106er path (that”s you @spencer_cscott) and take an assignment and tweak and create it into an assignment of my own. Learning by Design is creating a doodle or sketch of a complex topic and making it into a visual with design principles.
I have been interested in sketchnoting and been reading the work of Sylvia Duckworth. (Sketchnotes for Beginners) And for years now RSA style videos have fascinated and tempted me to discover how to create. The next thing that came into play was all the mystery around Dr. Groom this week. It is hard to not want to jump in as you are doing the assignments. The adventure actually creates a thread of connectedness in the community. (Probably designed that way don’tcha think!). As we each explore digital media and how to use it, a common thread helps as we approach our own content in learning new ways of creating and expression.
PROCESS
After reading about sketchnoting and downloading a few apps for my iPad. I settled on Paper 53. I liked the way it handled and the quality of the sketch. It makes scribbles, and bumps and jumps, look like a style and intended.
At first I thought I would use video and make it more of an RSA kind of presentation. I used an IPEVO document camera which captured my sketching in video format. It is cool and it worked and I will definitely go back to it for another assignment or creation. For my intent here, the distraction of my hand drawing (it looked HUGE) was not an example of thinking of design.
I refocused on the topic of the week – design and then decided to use photo shop instead, but add the audio and animation features as well. So here is the tweak – I did a design, of still images with audio to produce a video. To keep it manageable and an assignment not a project – I used only a part of the weekly videos to sketchnote. The reasons were that this was not to actually create a product of the content and it will be old in another few days. I wanted to understand the steps and process and create something short enough for feedback from others.
I downloaded the Groom Week 4 Video and the Intro to Week 5 video to extract audio. This was a good follow-up to week 4 and pushed me to stay with Audacity and audio editing. Another plus to continue with audio from last week and build.
I worked on the audio portions that I wanted to include in my story. From there I needed to now listen and do my sketchnote of those portions. I used the Paper 53 and created a full image just as the original assignment had suggested.
After saving as a JPEG I moved to Photoshop and opened the image.
The next steps:
Create 22 duplicate images and name each in sequence of sketchnote and context.
Create a first layer of a white background to act as the whiteboard.
Start with the first of the sequence and erase all but the one image.
Continue with the next 21 layers.
Export from Audacity and then Import the edited mp3 into Photoshop
Use the Timeline feature of PS and set all images at END of audio clip. I needed the story to stay within the audio so I worked backwards first to prevent running out of room at the end and having to continuously go back and move all the layers around.
Added transitions to layers when needed.
Created and added a last image for closure and identification, then added it to the timeline.
When satisfied with placements and flow I went to RENDER VIDEO and exported as mp4.
So sounds not too bad. BUT – I had to do this more than once – I stopped counting after #3. The first time I started on my desktop machine. As evening rolled around, I decided to switch to my laptop and at least be in the same room as my family and a little more comfortable. By this time it was mostly just the grunt work of moving layers a fraction of a space etc. Thought all was going great – it played in preview just great! I rendered and when I opened it NO AUDIO.
Okay – go back and try again. But then I found that after rendering and saving – the timeline turns into something flat and you really can’t go in and change much. So I had to get rid of the timeline and replace all the layers before rendering again.
Done – rendered – NOW IT HAS AUDIO BUT IMAGES ARE TWISTED! I needed to redo again! And this time I stressed out my laptop and it ran out of memory and froze up! Now I had to do machine maintenance and repair. Time for bed!
The next morning – I just went right to my desktop and worked there. I had saved some copies- but basically they had too many edits in them and it was faster to begin again. I had this down now – back to the Next steps above. Followed them and YEAH!!! It rendered and it came out fine!!!
LESSON LEARNED: Before exporting or doing a major change to the file – save at least 2 copies. This way I will have a master copy of a place in time to go back and not have to start completely over. I will need to remember to update that file as I go along as well. Next would be to get rid of all the copies that won’t make a difference anymore if you have to back so that I am not eating up memory and storage.
The original assignment was 3.5 stars. I am bumping it up to 5 stars on my chart – but I’m not tracking stars as an open course participant anyways.
Creating a picture using only 4 lines, 5 dots, and 1 curve seemed hard at first because I had no idea what I could create with that. However, the assignment “4 lines, 5 dots, 1 curve” (3.5 pts) asked you to do just that. However, this assignment made me think about what was actually important to the picture because it was impossible to add extra stuff to the picture. I decided to start with the lines (partly because it came first in the prompt and partly because they are simple). A couple lines and a curve could make what looks like those glasses that you can get milkshakes in at diners. To use my special glass and by 5 dots, I decided to create a picture of bubbles in chocolate milk:
I have never seen bubbles like this, but I attempted to make them seem somewhat realistic by being kind of see through, and higher on one side than the other. That is what happened whenever I blew bubbles in my milk. The straw is red like the thick ones you get with milkshakes (and it is a milkshake glass as well), but you can’t blow bubbles in milkshakes. However, if I had a special glass every time I drank chocolate milk, I would be a very happy camper. The chocolate milk idea also came from my idea that such a minimalist picture reminds me of what a child would create: pictures with no background and no realism that show what is truly important in their mind. Likewise, I created this picture in Paint and didn’t worry if it was askew or unrealistic. The important thing here is the great feeling you get when you blow bubbles in chocolate milk.
For Frank’s last assignment, I decided to create a GIF to show what happens when Ziggy grows up.
For this assignment, I first chose to use Chris Bauer’s character from True Blood. I found this video on YouTube (which was a bit disturbing actually) and mixed it with the scene where Frank fires Ziggy from the shipyard. I then used the awesome tutorial on how to create GIFs found here. The whole theme I went for on my final project was going back in time in Frank’s life to when Ziggy was younger, so why not do this!
Check it out.
