For my second video assignment during weeks 11 and 12 I chose the ‘Cooking Show’ challenge. It just so happens that my 16 year old daughter had to make a dish for her culinary class so we teamed up killing two tasks with one situation. She assisted by giving commentary of the process as I filmed her in the act. Once complete I uploaded the video to YouTube, then downloaded that to my video files. I then imported the video into Movie Maker to do some slight edits. I stabilized the footage to balance some of the shakiness while filming, added some title slides, some transitions, and ending credits. The final production is featured and can be found here.

http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/swede-a-scene/

4.5 Stars

Apart from my trust laptop, I pulled some minifigs and some pieces out of my LEGO box and tried my best to re-position the two to make it seem as though they were talking. Along with that, I also had my Desktop running the actual scene in the background. I would have tried doing the speech myself, but I tried and kept stumbling on the lines. Overall, I think it went pretty well overall.

I chose this scene because I rather enjoyed it. Marlow is an interesting character right now, and Prop Joe is always a cool character. This scene really reinforced the idea that Marlow feels like he is invincible at the moment. This always strikes me as completely contrary to how the other drug dealers think he is. You hear a bunch of them talking as though he is young and inexperienced, but his crew seems to be rather tight at the moment. Furthermore, he has the best muscle out on the streets. Personally, this talk was just cool to me.

Let me know what you think! This was take number three for this video!

To do my video essay on the Wire, I utilized the scenes from episode 11 of season 3, where Carcetti questions Bunny’s motives behind Hamsterdam. While the most memorable moment of this episode would no doubt be Stringer’s death, I still thought there were plenty of meaningful and artistic moments throughout the episode. I used Windows Movie Maker to edit the clips together and overlay a narration. This is where I finally came across one of the programs main limitations. In certain parts of the video, the audio/video come out of sync. While my narration isn’t affected, it’s still pretty annoying to see. I fixed it up as much as I could, but there was only so much I could do with the files I had. Overall I hope it doesn’t detract from the quality of the analysis.

Difficult Rating: 5 stars

http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/public-service-annoucement/

5- Stars

As always, the only tools needed to make this one was my laptop camera and a room with decent lighting.

Now as for why I chose this one, this is a more interesting story. For the past 13 (soon to be 14) years of my life, teachers/professors have always been assigning work over break periods. I for one have gotten tired of it! This is not a laughing matter, this is 100% serious! What is the point of break if we have work to do! I mean think about it; sometimes, you go on break simply to work on more stuff for school. That is utter garbage! With that in mind, I believed that it was time to say something about this. More importantly, I believe we need more PSA’s stating that we don’t need work for breaks.

No one likes it. That is all.

http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/this-is-my-story/

3 Stars

This one was another fun one to make. All I needed was my trusty computer, some notecards, and my favorite writing utensil (in retrospect, I probably should have found a marker). Coming up with a story was almost a no brainer.

This story will forever stick out to me because the odds of this happening are extremely low. Let me explain a bit further. I’m driving down the road at 40 mph and hit a flying object with the front windshield of our van. The bat then loops around and goes through the open window and finally lands on the passenger side, dead. If someone can tell me the odds of that, I will give you a cookie (seriously!). Anyways, that’s what I have to say about this one; it just makes me laugh!

Let me know what you think!

I chose scenes from season 4 episode 2 for my video essay. On Wednesday, Jim, Paul, Travis, and I discussed this episode and I really enjoyed the discussions we had. I decided to tie them into my video essay. The first scene is of Carcetti and his daughter playing Battleship. It then shows Prez in preparing his classroom for the school year. Finally, we see Wee Bay, Namond, and Namond’s mother in the prison for visitation. These scenes all relate to the relationships between generations which is a prominent theme in this season. Before this season, there were not many children, especially under the age of 15. These scenes and my commentary point out the theme of adult/child relationships.

http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/i-am-me/

4.5 Stars

For this assignment, I decided to break out my laptop and grab some of my favorite items that described me around the room. Recording was fairly simple since my laptop has a built in microphone and camera. I just used the camera app that was installed and got to recording! Oh, and I also managed to open a couple of windows to add some more light.

I personally wanted to do this one for two main reasons. Firstly, I figured it would be something I could put on the About the Author page. Second, I really wanted to show-off my most recent build! With that in mind, choosing this was no problem. Again, this seemed relatively simple, and I had a fun time making this one.

Let me know what you think!

For 4 1/2 to 5 stars and some change on the side if creating a swede as a group, the biddies and I were back at it! Although all three of us had SOL chasing us consistently for the last two weeks, we utilized technology more with prepping to combat some tough blows. You can see us hard at work here:

We agreed during this ‘Chop it Up’ session that our target would be Season 4 ending of episode 5 Alliances and two other major scenes in episode 6 Margin of Error. I imported these episodes into Movie Maker and trimmed these particular parts so we could practice our scenes. Melinda provided a link where we were able to print our scripts. Finally, we agreed on location shots and day in which to record.

We met at the Greyhound station, with it being so cold we opted against shooting our episode from a rooftop and instead used old green plastic toy army men for our first clip where Herc and Sydnor are planting a surveillance camera. Our next shot was of Marlo arranging what seemed to be a pick up for re-up. We chose to combine actual footage along with a reenactment of Marlo and Chris’s conversation. This was filmed by Melinda, recreated by Desa and myself in full roughneck costume. Note we shot next to a utility closet with a sign which reads ‘Sprinkler Room’, symbolic of the lye Chris and Snoop chooses to lay over their victims. Our last scene was shot within the Greyhound station to give context to Marlo’s attempt to evade the detectives who have surveillanced his previous conversation. All three of our group members ‘The Biddies’ can be seen in our production below.

My final video assignment (yay) of the week was the “Video Essay” that we were all required to do. If i could describe this assignment in one word it would be “underestimated” because that’s how i looked at it. I figured, hey, i just have to talk about the episode! Um, yeah. That wasn’t just it. I have to sound knowledgable also. I can’t just BS my way through this. I find this aspect of the class difficult. I’m not very good with analyzing the episodes. I like to discuss my reaction and thoughts but actually analyzing this is pretty difficult. I tried my hardest though, so do not judge! I think i actually stuttered a couple of times and definitely repeated myself. Who cares. JUST LISTEN TO IT!

The Episode/Scenes:

I chose Episode 2 of Season 4. It was fresh in my head and i felt i had a lot of thoughts on it. The scenes i chose were great, i thought. Let’s discuss the first scene. That was intense. Seriously Mayor? You couldn’t lock the door? I loved the camera angles in this scene because it reminded me of The Shining like i mentioned in the video. For more thoughts on this, watch the video essay! My second scene was Prez and the classroom. That song was perfect. Ring of Fire. It made me feel really sad because it was so accurate. He did mess up his life and it all burned before him. But the colors in the room implied a new, brighter beginning for him. That’s why i chose it. The next scene was cool too because it was the new and improved boxing gym. I loved how Avon’s old boxing picture was hung up because it tied him back into the show. That’s how to recognized him in the first place during that basketball game (EvW). I enjoyed viewing the boxing coach’s character as a good person. He made a life away from the drugs after learning that it gets you nowhere. I was struggling to find my final scene so i went with the scene with Bubbles and his friend. After his white boy died, i was sad. It seems like he found a new friend but he’s trying to improve his life. Go to school, it’s great. Bubbles is overall a good guy. I also liked this scene because it included Prez. Once again, the show is tied back to everyone. Where’s McNulty though? Anyways, those were my scenes! Now let me show you how i created this!

Process:

Imovie has slowly become my best friend. It’s not a great relationship thought because it’s hard! Why can’t the movie making process be easy? Life isn’t easy so whatever. I started with downloading the episode. That was good. I opened the episode in MPeg and cut each scene i wanted. This wasn’t too difficult. My next step was to import everything to Imovie. This took me longer thane expected because i kept on shifting the frames and the audio wouldn’t match up. After a couple tries, it was easy. The only easy part of this process was the audio. Imovie has this great feature where you can record over scenes. I had to adjust the sound so my voice wasn’t too powerful and you could hear a little bit of the actual episode. This turned out great! I’m pleased with my final product and i hope you enjoy it. I definitely believe this was worth the 5 stars, no doubt. Here’s my link below!

Stars:5

For the Activity Time Lapse assignment, worth 3.5 stars, I chose to make a time lapse video of me braiding my hair in a basic side braid. I used the time lapse feature on my iPhone to record it. However, that made the time lapse 4.0 seconds long. So, on the Youtube video editing settings, I slowed it down and I added a filter to it because the lighting my apartment is not very great, so I wanted to mask it.

Here’s the final product.