Hiya! So the Swede a Scene (5 stars) was by far my favorite assignment this semester! I really enjoyed it!

With the help of my group members, Amy, David, Demi, and Carmela, we recreated Season 3 episode 11 of the Wire. Now SPOILER ALERT, this is where one of the main character, Stringer is murdered. So while we were in the planning phases, we met as a group to have a little brain storming session. Jim Groom, happened to walk in the ITCC when we were having our meeting so we brought him in to get his input. He talked about how different swedes were made from legos and we knew that we couldn’t remake the episode using humans. So Amy was tasked with getting Barbie dolls from the dollar store. Unfortunately there were none so we settled on teddy bears. But I think that made it even funnier!

So it was time to film. I checked out a camera and a tripod from the ITCC front desk and off we went. We decided that the stand off between Omar and Brother Mouzone was a pivotal scene to use, as well as Stringer’s murder. we also decided to use the scene where the crew uses the new technology to get Stringer on the wire. We

went through each scene to get the script then we were up and running. Amy and I talked through the layouts of each scene then Demi filmed. We had a lapel microphone to capture the audio, which really helped the editing process. After all of the filming was done, I was tasked with the big gun: the editing. I really enjoy the editing process but it also stresses me out. I think, ok I can put it together when I get the time and it will get done faster that way. But in reality I really need to sit down and do it all at once. All in all the editing was a lot of fun. I especially enjoyed making the title sequence and the end credits.

Here is a picture of what the editing process looked like!

Here is the final product! Enjoy!

Hiya! The Video Essay (5 stars) was an interesting assignment. Instead of using what ever film or TV show we wanted, we were tasked with using the Wire. I decided to use season 4 episode 1 for this. And at first I was really excited to do this assignment and I saw some great themes throughout the episode but when I got ready to create the voice over, I just couldn’t get what I wanted to say out. They were good themes throughout the episode but I just couldn’t figure out what I wanted to say, fortunately I was able to after countless takes with the voice overs.

The Color Green:

I saw the color green a lot throughout the episode. In particular I saw green a the color of money. In the beginning of the episode, Snoop gets into a green Nissan Armada after she buys the nail gun. In this case the green means wealth because an Armada isn’t a cheap car. It seems to be a newer model so he definitely would need a good amount of money to buy the car.

The next snippet of the color green I saw was in the cupola of city hall. This also represents the use of money, especially since it is city hall, and the government needs a lot of money to run.

I noticed Dukie’s shirt was green but not in the way of wealth. Its almost like he’s the odd ball out. And you can see that when he gets picked on by the group, they are wearing plain white t-shirts.

Other Things:

So while watching the episode I wrote down things that I saw that I thought were interesting.

I noticed that after the Mayor finished tying his tie, it was crooked. I thought this was interesting because its almost like he’s stuck in this rut, where its a cycle of the same things day after day. The crooked tie shows that he’s tired, everything is starting to weigh him down. I also noticed this cycle with Carcetti, I noticed that he’s always in the cycle to get to his next appearance and this weighs him down too. He becomes frustrated because he’s not where he wants to be in the campaign.

The next scene is where the two groups meet for a revenge plot. However that revenge plot goes south quick. I thought this was interesting because they worked so hard on this but by just one mistake it totally turned around, and for the worse too.

The final scene I talk about is the one where the teachers are sitting down in a presentation. They seem completely bored, they definitely don’t want to be in this presentation. Then it cuts over to the police in a presentation as well. They are bored as well. I thought this was a cool mirror in the episode. Both groups had to be in this presentation but I’m sure they all could think of better things they could have been doing with their time.

Over all I thought this assignment was interesting. Besides the fact that the voice over was a little wonky I really enjoyed picking out different things to talk about from the episode! Here is the final product!

Lauren Brumfield and I worked on our swede together so we could do more scenes and make our swede more in-depth. We wanted to focus on the scenes from this episode that led to D’Angelo’s demise, so we did the scene where D talks about The Great Gatsby, the talk with his mother at the jail window, the look shared between D and Avon and finally the death scene itself. We tried to make it somewhat funny, while also getting the main points across and showing D’s slow demise over the episode.

We rented a camera from the Convergence Center to film the show and used people to help us film, as well as many props. We uploaded the videos and edited them in iMovie and then published the video onto YouTube.

4.5*

Another of the video assignments I decided to complete was one that I created. I decided to kill 2 birds with 1 stone by creating a video assignment for ds106 as well as completing it for my weekly assignments. I am naming this one Special Person Montage. Basically, you are to choose someone who is special to you. Whether they are related to you, friends, a celebrity, or anyone they must just be special to you. A few weeks ago my grandfather passed away at age 95 and I wanted to create a memorial video for his memorial service. He had 7 children, 10 grandchildren, and 1 great grandchild. So first I contacted each relative and asked for them to send me any pictures they had of my Pap (that’s what we called him). What took the most time was trying to find pictures from his earlier years prior to digital. I had to go through countless boxes of pictures and then scanned the ones I wanted to use. It actually worked pretty well just was really time consuming. I had to crop a few photos but they turned out pretty good. I created a similar video 5 years ago for his 90th birthday party so I had an idea as to what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to make the video super sappy and what not so I chose some background instrumental music that was neutral. I used My Eyes -Blake Shelton, All You Need Is Love – The Beatles, 100 Years – Five For Fighting, Isn’t She Lovely – Stevie Wonder, and Good Life – One Republic. Like I said I used instrumental for each of these and I used an online converter to get the music from youtube. My video is about 20 minutes long but no one should make a 20 minute long video for this assignment. I did this because I wanted to created for the family and the memorial service so obviously I put a lot more into it than anyone should for this assignment. Using windows movie maker I imported all the pictures, added some animation, a beginning title slide, and music to top it all off. I don’t expect anyone to watch the whole movie but just skim through a couple areas to see what the general idea of this video assignment is.

I chose my Pap as my special person because he has always been there for me. He has provided me with wisdom and life lessons throughout my entire life. He was a WWII Veteran, raised 7 kids, a faithful man, hardworking, and much more. He has been such a significant part to me life and is beyond special to me.

I decided to rate this 5 stars because the time it takes to gather old photos of someone special to you is hard and time consuming. If the person only has pictures in the digital age then this may be a 3/4 star assignment but I think 4 is fair if you have to find old pictures and scan them in order to use them.

Hiya! The 5-Second Film (5 stars) was a lot of fun! It was tough though to get all of the footage in in 5-seconds. I wanted to add maybe a good 20 seconds of footage but I had to scale back. So I settled on 0.5 seconds clips for the whole time. When deciding what to use I tried to stick with most of the plot. So I went to YouTube and searched for the best moments in the Lion King and I literally took the first 3 videos that were in the search results I converted them into ClipConverter, then imported them into iMovie.

I went through and added just a small snippet of the videos to the storyboard. Once that was done I muted the clips. I searched for the Circle of Life song on YouTube and converted this song to an mp3 to use as the background song. Once I added the song to the filmstrip I then exported the file and uploaded it to YouTube!

I think it turned out really well! I really enjoyed going back and looking at the Lion King while deciding what to use for this assignment. Here is the final product!

That Bleep Censor (5 stars) was actually a lot of fun to make! I was watching Season 4 Episode 1 in preparation for my Video Essay, and I thought this scene was another great one to bleep out! The best one would be where Bunk and McNulty we recreating the murder scene in season 1. Amy did a great job bleeping out that scene! So when I watched the scene for the first time I knew that this would be a good scene to bleep out.

I had the episode downloaded from MediaCore and imported it into iMovie. Then I went through the episode to find the specific scene I wanted. In the photo below the scene is where the Green line is. Now granted this whole scene in particular isn’t the greatest, but it works fine. So I had the part that I wanted in the storyboard (where most of the editing takes place). This is mainly where I added the bleep sound to each word. I went through the whole scene and isolated the bad words. I did this by splitting the clip just after the first syllable of the word. Then I split the clip again after the last syllable of that same word. I used the left and right arrows to really hone in on the sound of the word. Then I got the bleep sound from YouTube with my trusty ClipConverter. I used that to cut out the words. Where I split the clip, I placed the sound (where the green is on the storyboard). Then I lowered the volume in each isolated clip with the bad words in them. Now it was mainly finished! all I had to do was share the file itself and upload it to YouTube. iMovie already incorporated  an automatic share to YouTube but I prefer to export the file and upload it from there because I’m already logged into YouTube in my internet Browser.

I really enjoyed making this! I thought it was really cool that I could isolate a specific word itself and bleep it out. It was really cool to use it just to isolate a specific part to the word. Here is the final project!

I conquered 5 of the 7 1/2 stars left to complete in week 10 of video with the assignment ‘That Bleeping Censor’. Finally after trial and error with first grasping use of Movie Maker and then technology problems only fixable through the help of IT, I successfully completed this assignment by my lonesome! I imported a video from the HUB library of season 4 episode 2. After trimming the portions of scenes where key characters announced that they didn’t mind be opportunist at any cost, and consistent and exaggerated use of Shiiii by Senator Clay Davis; I turned to sounds. I found sounds which symbolized these colorful statements and layered them in with the video featured below.

For my next video assignment this week I did “Dear 16 Year Old Me” (4 stars). At first I was like eh, I don’t really know about this one. It seems interesting but I don’t know how much I would have to say. Then I realized that I actually would have a lot to say. That was the beginning of the two hardest years of school for me (college included). I was envious (I guess) of my friends because they had all the guys and no one seemed to want me except one guy that I didn’t want (funny how that works, isn’t it). Anyway I figured I would have plenty to talk about and it turns out I did.

How I did it:

I wrote the letter to myself and did no editing on it so it was exactly what I was feeling. I then opened up my webcam (CyberLink YouCam) and hit record. I pulled up the letter on Microsoft Word and read it while recording the video (which is why I’m not looking at the camera, sorry). Then I had to convert it to MP4 using Zamzar which for some reason took FOREVER to download but eventually it did. Then I uploaded it to YouTube and here it is:

For my second video assignment for these two weeks I decided to do the “Activity Time Lapse” (3.5 stars). I thought it would be fun to do. I especially wish I had more time this week to do an art project and do a time lapse of that, but of course I don’t so I had to be a little more creative. I decided to do a time lapse video of me making popcorn–because who doesn’t like popcorn and also I wanted to eat some.

How I did it:

I saw that there was a time lapse function on my iPhone so I decided to try it out with this assignment. I hit start recording and grabbed my popcorn, walked upstairs and put it in the microwave and watched it pop. I watched it on my phone and thought it was a little too fast so I emailed it to myself and downloaded it. I then put it into Windows Live Movie Maker and slowed it down to half speed. That was perfect, I thought, so I exported it and went to zamzar to change it to MP4 and uploaded it to YouTube.

Here is how it turned out: