Marlo Thomas once said, “I think loss of loved ones is the hardest blow in life.” That’s true because I loss a loved one which was my Dadu, grandfather, to a rare liver cancer he had. He was diagnosed in 2000 and died on November 1st, 2006. It was hard for him the last 2 years of his life. Everyday he felt pain in his body especially in his legs because he couldn’t walk so he had crutches to help him out. Basically it was like he had to learn again how to walk. It was that bad for him to walk. I remembered he came to America to see my family and I one last time and spend for 3 weeks in 2003. I will never forget those three weeks.

He taught me the lessons to life of what to be a good man like he was and not be rude or mean to anyone. Especially be humble, be thankful to God for everything, and love life everyday. Enjoy it. We had so much fun. He always kept cheating in a game call ludo and I’m like “Wait something isn’t right…” and my grandfather would be like, “Alright let’s keep going!!” so that I wouldn’t find out he cheated. He was the best grandfather I could have asked for. I remember asking him that why can’t he stay longer, and then he gave me a hug and was like:

“I wish I can stay longer but I have to go.”

I was sad but I was thinking I may see him again. At the airport, when we dropped him off with my relatives my mom was crying a lot and I didn’t understood why. I thought I would see him one more time but my mom was like “We don’t know if we’ll see him one more time or not, give him a hug.” I was like:

“I’m going to miss you dadu. I love you.”

I’ll never forget him with the two pictures I have in my room of him:

I hope I’m making him proud that I’m being a humble, friendly, nice, and helpful person to everyone today as he was before. He inspired me completely. I did the music video assignment dedicated to him. It’s worth 5 stars. Here’s the video dedicated to my Dadu:

For the Video Essay assignment, I decided to discuss scenes from The Wire season 3, episode 12 and how they show the characters dealing with Stringer’s death and comprehending how they understood him and where they go from here.

I downloaded the episode and rewatched the scenes I wanted to cover, taking note of what was important about them and how they were shot. I then imported the video into iMovie and trimmed it to only the clips I needed. Then I added in the title and credit screens. For the audio commentary, I recorded myself talking in Audacity, exported the file as an mp3 and imported it into iMovie. I then split the audio from the video in the clips from the show and rearranged it so that my commentary track was above the audio of the episode, so it would take precedence. I then split and adjusted my commentary as well as the volume of the audio from the episode.

Here is what it looked like in iMovie:

I then saved the file and uploaded it to YouTube. Here is the final product:

I’m not sure this is my best work, and I’m sure I could have refined and structured the audio and ideas better, but I think it gets my ideas across well.

One of the more memorable scenes from early on in The Wire is of Bunk and McNulty at the cold crime scene in the apartment where they only say “fuck.” I love it, and think it’s a great, humorous scene. When I saw the That Bleeping Censor assignment, I thought it would be interesting to see how this scene would change if all the profanity was bleeped.

I found the scene on YouTube here and dowloaded it using Clip Converter. Since I knew I’d be editing the audio, I downloaded it both as a video (mp4) and as an audio track (mp3). In iMovie, I created a new event and a new movie as I do for every project and imported the mp4 file. I then opened Audacity and imported the mp3 file. I added bleeping sounds by selecting the section of the audio and choosing Generate > Tone and setting it to Sine wave at 1000 Hz. I did this for each “fuck,” which was quite tedious, depending on how it was said. Once I completed this task, I exported it as an mp3. Back in iMovie, I split the audio from the video, deleted the audio, and imported the edited audio. I then added a title screen at the beginning and credits at the end.

Here is a screenshot of what it looked like once it was all edited together:

I think the bleeps take a lot away from the scene. There’s a beauty to all the different ways they say “fuck” and it really illustrates their various reactions as they go along. “Fuck” is a very versatile word and despite it being considered profane, its placement and the tone in which it is said really shapes our understanding of someone’s reaction or feelings about something.

Here is my final product:

For my video essay, I decided to look at The Wire as a primary source. I am Dr. McClurken’s U.S. History in Film class, and one of the things we do is look at the movies we watch as primary sources. We discuss what a movie can tell us about when it was made. For example, Disney’s Pocahontas can tell us more about the way that Native Americans were viewed in the 1990s than about the actual story of Pocahontas (which is nothing like what is showed in the Disney movie in case you were wondering). The Wire was made in 2002, about contemporary issues, and can now be used as a primary source to study this time.

The Idea

A couple of weeks ago, one of my professors showed us a video of two bears fighting in a neighborhood in New Jersey. It’s a pretty tense thing to watch, and you can tell from their body language that this fight is a matter of dominance.

When I saw the assignment for Animal Dance-Off, I thought it would be really great to put this kind of animal interaction to hardcore music. Hardcore music has a lot of dances associated with it that are all pretty masculine and aggressive–mosh pits, circle pits, walls of death, etc. And this kind of music tends to be a masculine approach to heavy, emotional situations. This genre usually doesn’t have a lot of love songs; it’s a lot about being yourself, doing what you want to do, and staying positive. Of course, its presented with music that makes it possible for guys to get out all their angst while not losing an ounce of masculinity.

The Process

I downloaded the bear fight video and imported it into iMovie. I then imported D.R.U.G.S.’s “Stop Reading, Start Doing Pushups” from my iTunes library. I added a title screen as well as credits to the end. Then I had to adjust where it started so the bear fight would begin after the monologue at the beginning of the song comes to a close and the music really starts going. I also had to trim the video because there are parts where the camera moves or the person filming takes cover in his car. I just wanted it to be the bears fighting, so I had to cut out a lot. Also, the bear video was six minutes long and the song is only around two or three minutes long.

Here’s what it looked like once I had complied it to my satisfaction:

Then I saved the file and uploaded the file to YouTube.

Here’s my finished product:

For my first video assignment of the week, i went with an assignment i felt confident completing. What caught my eye was the “Vine It” assignment. I’m a serious lover of Vine. It’s so fun to create 6 second videos. What i really enjoy about Vining is the creativity of it all. Some people find it very difficult to create a video that’s only 6 seconds but people really get into it. Since i live on campus, my life is pretty dull. Most of my friends are a year older than me and they live on College Ave. So, after my classes, i usually just let myself in and hang out over there. Since this is something i do almost every day, i chose this for the “Vine It” assignment. I always have my laptop in my backpack so i usually surf Tumblr or DS106 while i’m over here. The vine was a little difficult to make because some parts were a lot shorter than others but watch it and see what i mean!

Ds106 'Vine It' assignment https://t.co/bmjwfbrjnT

— Carmela Mitchell (@cmitche21) November 7, 2014

As you can tell by watching it, it’s really fast. So, i figured it would help if i talk about what i shot. I mean, i don’t want to leave you guys hanging! The first thing i filmed was walking through the door. Keep in mind that this isn’t my house. You can also see that i didn’t knock. I basically live here so there’s no need to. Since these poor college students have to pay for their own utilities, the house is almost always dark so i filmed myself turning on a lamp. Ha. I thought that was a little funny. Next shot was me taking off my sliders. It was really quick so i won’t be disappointed if you didn’t catch it. It’s no big deal. So above i mentioned that i always carry my laptop with me everywhere. I filmed myself opening/turning on my laptop because that’s usually what i end up doing when i come over. Lastly, you see Pandora. Now, i don’t care what anyone says, Pandora is great. I don’t mess with Spotify. That’s just crazy. So i filmed myself pressing play to a song on one of my stations. When do i not post about music related events in my life? Well, there you have it! My daily routine after my classes. You’ll rarely find me in my dorm

Stars:3

For my first video assignment, I choose the assignment entitled Return to the Silent Era this assignment was worth 4 1/2 stars.   I enjoyed this one because it allowed me to get creative and choose a throw back movie, one of my horror favorites “Child’s Play 2.”

It is amazing to how reducing the sound on a scary video like this was more effective.

I choose the horror genre because I believe most horror movie trailers are meant to scare you with images and not necessarily sound.  Therefore, I thought what could be more terrifying than a killer doll possessed by an evil human spirit!! (Can’t go wrong right???)

Process

I began my battle by using the software called Clip Grab.  This tool allowed me to search for the trailer of my choice on youtube then, I selected the clip of the video I wanted, and the software through Clip Grab allowed me to convert and save the file to my desktop.  Once in there I managed to edit and paste and add captions as well as take out the color of the video with the movie maker black and white effect.  I took out the sound by going to the “Volume Edit option” in the upper left hand corner of the “Edit Video” Tools and I moved the volume bar all the way down to mute.. This allowed for my sound to be taken out.

Once I was done with this process I had to save it as an .MP4 file by clicking on the  “Save as YouTube,” format which cut the amount of time I had to make a video in half!

After saving my video to my desktop, I was able to upload it to my YouTube Account…this giving me the finished product below:

Child’s Play 2: Silent Horror Redux

The my favorite trip assignment was a lot of fun to make! It made me very nostalgic for the summertime. I searched through pictures from the past four summers and put them together. Luckily, I found some videos to throw in too! Next, I chose songs to go along with it. I put the whole thing together in Movie Maker so it was pretty easy!

Enjoy a trip through St. Thomas with a few excursions to St. John and Jost Van Dyke!

For the video essay assignment I really wanted to do my commentary on episode 11 of season 3 because it is my favorite episode thus far. Stringer is one of the most interesting characters and his attempt to rise above the gangster world and enter the business world and the resulting fall is so sad, yet beautiful to me. He tries to rise above himself and his past, but he does not belong in the business world and ends up being betrayed by Avon, his brother figure.

This episode had so many great scenes that culminated into Stringer’s death and so I chose certain scenes very carefully and then ended with Stringer’s death scene. Below is some written analysis of each scene that I did not get to discuss in the video analysis.

I want to start with the opening scene of the episode with Omar:

I love the opening scene with Omar because we hear what I call Omar’s “fight song” which is usually whistled by him as he goes into battle with a giant gun, but here he is held at gunpoint by the Reverend. Omar is shadowed out in a hallway of sorts, walking with coat tails flapping behind him. There is nothing but darkness and smoke around him.

This scene is really important because it so well parallels Stringer’s death scene at the end of the episode, where Omar and the Reverend work together to murder Stringer. This scene is so Westernized with the pulled guns and constant back and forth of the camera. The camera zooms in and then takes longer shots of the two men as their guns are pulled out at each other.

The next scene I want to discuss is the discussion between Stringer and Avon, which parallels the fight scene between Avon and Stringer from before. Avon is again yelling at Stringer for being too business minded, but this time Stringer realizes he has failed in his endeavors. The camera goes back and forth between the men again and they are positioned the same way, even with the same contrasting white and black clothing.

The scenes in which Stringer and Avon betray each other are very paralleled as well, but I am just going to focus on Stringer’s scene with the Major in the cemetery. The scene is very dark and smoky. It’s extremely dramatic, with the slow movement focusing in on the various headstones and angels. Then the camera jumps back to Stringer selling out Avon to the Major. The whole scene reminds me of a Deep Throat moment, but much creepier as it’s in a graveyard. The flowers beyond the Major make the scene even more dark because of the contrast. I also like that this scene foreshadows what happens to Stringer at the end of the episode.

Stringer and Avon on roof

Stringer attack and running with Omar walking in darkness:

Stringer immediately runs and all we hear is him running and the man crying, who is nothing to Omar. The pigeons fly around prophetically, and much like a church yard scene, as Stringer tries to find a way out. Then Omar in shadow once again walks through the building hallways. This is the parallel I pointed out earlier to the beginning of the episode.

A cool triangle is created with Stringer in the middle and the two guns pointed at him. The light shines behind him as a symbolic light of why this is happening occurs to Stringer. Omar tells him Avon gave Stringer up and Omar is getting back at him for his boyfriend’s death. Stringer is utterly defeated in words and manner, with his face showing his own defeat. Avon’s betrayal ruins his resolve it seems. The two men walk toward Stringer and look at each other after they shoot Stringer before he can get his last words out. The camera then lingers on the sign in the background on the building, which represents Stringer’s hopes for the future. Then a light shines on Stringer’s dead body as the other two walk away.

This scene was the climax of the episode and represents a finish to a great character. Everything in this episode culminated in Stringer’s ultimate demise, which was beautifully created.

5*

For my first video assignment this week I decided to start out easy. I did “It’s Vacation Time” (2 stars). I chose this not because I had a favorite vacation but because I love going back and looking at vacation pictures and making a video is an easy way to do that. I love all of my vacations equally. There are certain aspects of all of them that I like, so I don’t really have a “favorite” per se. I liked this one because I was there with my boyfriend and his family and because all of the islands that we got to go to were great. We went on a cruise leaving out of San Juan, Puerto Rico and went to St. Thomas, Barbados, St. Lucia, St. Kitts, and St. Maarten. All of the islands were great and Ryan’s mom did a great job choosing which excursions we did on the islands. It was a great time and I would love to go back to some of the islands to stay for a whole week.

How I did it:

I used Window’s Live Movie Maker to make this video. I imported the pictures and videos that I wanted in the video into Movie Maker and rearranged them so that they were in chronological order. Then I decided what music to use. I went with “Under the Sea” from the Little Mermaid which you might not end up being able to hear because I have to upload the video to YouTube before I put it on here because the file is way too big and they like to mute music that is copyrighted (understandably so, it’s just annoying). Anyway I went to Project>Fit to Music so that the pictures wouldn’t take longer to go through than the music would last. I also went through and deleted some pictures that I decided I didn’t want (it also had to be under 100MB or I could not change it to MP4 on zamzar.com). I then went through and narrated some slides using captions and chose different animations for them. I also added animations to all of the pictures to make them more dynamic and less static.

Overall I am really happy with how it turned out. I hope you enjoy re-living my vacation with me!