For my Video Essay I decided to focus on a specific theme that has been shown throughout all of the seasons thus far. The theme institutional dysfunction is one that is shown through many of the characters. From McNulty to the Mayor and even in the Barksdale Organization this theme is portrayed numerous times. I focused on the police department and the mayor for the scenes I wanted to show. Basically, the department is dysfunctional. Numerous guys go behind each others back and black mail each other to get what they want. They are all extremely selfish and only care about themselves and not about others.

I used scenes from Season 3 episode 11 and 12 and also from Season 4 Episode 5 (I know it is a little ahead of what we were suppose to watch but I found a scene that I wanted to use). I could not find the exact scenes on youtube so I downloaded them from the UMW Media Hub. Using Windows Live Movie maker I cut the scenes I wanted. I decided to take a different approach to the video essay. I did not want to talk over the scene while it was playing because I felt that it was distracting while I was listening to the speaker. So what I did is I talked on a still picture and then played the scene and then discussed the scene after it played. Not that this is the right way or not to do it I just felt this was best for my essay. I used audacity to record my thoughts and then inserted them in with the video clips to get my final product.

After winning the championship in the NBA Finals in 2008 of Game 6, Kevin Garnett said, “Anything is possible!” I’m pretty sure I used that quote in my other blog posts but I love his quote. It’s true though. I wish he was still a Celtic. It was a great opportunity though to do the video assignment (4.5/5 stars) of a pump up video for this season. I used Wondershare to do this assignment. It was fun. I was all like when I found this assignment:

Anyways since I know this season that my favorite team, Boston Celtics, will make a huge playoff run. I’m not going to stop believing it! Without further ado, here is my pump-up video for the 2014-15 Boston Celtics! Enjoy!

For my third (5 star) video assignment I chose to commemorate my daughter. She just recently enlisted into the United States Navy, with Veteran’s Day just passing I thought this would be a great tribute to her. I dropped many tears in the process, still absorbing the unselfish sacrifice that she has chosen to make. A beautiful girl in the flesh and in her spirit, a child I had always known would be capable of extraordinary things. She has made me a proud parent and assured me that my job was efficient and complete. Enjoy a brief but private moment into the life of a new soldier!

All pictures and video were uploaded to Movie Maker. Audio, after being suggested by my fellow classmate and “Biddie 4Life” was uploaded to audacity for minor trimming to silence video coverage within this video. I then uploaded the final edits to YouTube and embedded here.

For the video essay assignment I chose Season 1 Episode 5 for analysis because it’s where we see Omar become established as a power player.  He’s in everyone’s business, he knows what is going on, and he knows which drug dealers he can stick up and exactly when the stash is full. Enjoy!

A friend once told me, “It’s always good to look back once a while, there are some memories you would like to remember eventually.” After remembering my friend say that, I thought for the video essay assignment like why not look back at Season 1 of The Wire. I wanted to do Season 1 Episode 1 because to me it’s the intro of The Wire so it’ll show who’s who and which character does what. I wanted to relate it to the theme seniority that happened in this episode. I chose only scenes of which I thought was the main ones to relate to seniority. I used Wondershare to cut the clips of the scenes of which I downloaded from Mediahub and used audacity to record of my commentary.

When I finished this, I kept thinking like I wouldn’t be able to finish this but when I did, I was like:

Without further ado, here is my video essay! Enjoy!

For the Swede a Scene assignment I worked with Syd and we redid the opening scene of Season 3 Episode 11. Thanks to my house mate for filming the scene it turned out pretty decent. I do not think I have any chance at an acting career but you never know what will happen. After we recorded it we used windows live movie maker to edit it and then we added a few sound affects to make it like the actual scene. It took us a lot of takes mainly because I messed up and laughed a lot but here it is:

YouTube is doing something funky with a “warping” kind of effect that I can’t figure out, but here it is.  I think I’ll try uploading to Vimeo next time and see if that improves things.   I went with Season 1 Episode 5 “The Pager” for the Swede video assignment since it’s one of my […]

This is an odd assignment, if viewed out of context.  I look  like I’m off some meds.  Oh well.  Let the blackmailing begin.  Here it is:

For this assignment, I worked with Travis. We decided to do the scene where Brother Mouzone finds Omar. It was a lot of fun filming this despite technical difficulties when all three of our phones died. We used Movie Maker to clip and edit the pieces of the film and then added sounds using freesound.org. Shout out to our friend John for filming and directing.

Enjoy!

For the Video Essay assignment worth 5 stars, I chose 3 scenes from Season 4, Episode 3 of The Wire, “Home Rooms.” I downloaded the episode from the Wire 106 website and then imported it into iMovie. I only moved the scenes I was providing commentary for to the actual timeline in iMovie. Then, I recorded my commentary using iMovie’s recording feature.
The scenes I picked were the most enjoyable/most intense scenes in my opinion from the episode.
Here’s my final product:

-embed coming soon, youtube decided to flag it for copyright-

OR

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl1BqPCZJNI