Here is a photo montage of my vacation to Germany and France. The background music is my favorite classical piece Canon in D Major by Pachelbel.

Here is Smooth Criminal – Michael Jackson that has the audio stripped and replaced with scary sound effects. The video itself is kind of weird and spooky looking so I decided that a scary sound effects backgournd would match up pretty well.

I decided to do the Musicless Music Video assignment.

I’ve seen some weird music videos in my day, so I knew I needed to track down the best of the best, the one that would truly come across as strange or awkward when the music was stripped away. And I thought of the perfect one: Panic! At the Disco’s “Girls/ Girls/ Boys.”

Here’s the original:

It’s basically the lead singer, Brendon Urie, sensually and expressively dancing around naked. It goes great with the tone and topic of the song, but take away the song and it gets really weird.

Here is the video without music:

It’s really strange.

So I thought I’d see what would happen if I incorporated some sound effects available in iMovie. (Spoiler Alert: It just got weirder.)

I decided to add some club-like music as well as some child sounds and police sirens to create this creepy pedophile narrative. (I watch a lot of Criminal Minds, okay?)

Wanting to redeem myself for creating such a sinister subtext to the music video, I decided to turn Brendon’s little dance into something that people are laughing at him for. Cue copious amounts of sitcom laughter clips. I love how some of Brendon’s facial expressions work well with being laughed at and seem to suggest he’s trying to stay composed despite being laughed at while he’s obviously baring his soul in a very vulnerable manner.

If nothing else from this assignment, I see how a good music video doesn’t make sense without its music and how changing the sound can affect how you comprehend the narrative of the video. Just think of all the movies where sounds are used to clue you in on what’s about to happen or toy with your emotions. It’s basically turning manipulation into an art form.

For my first video assignment this week I decided to do “Chipmunk Style” (2.5 stars). I figured it would be a good introduction to how Windows Move Maker works. Not super hard but not super easy either. When I was watching the episode I knew that I had to do this assignment for that scene. I knew it was going to be hilarious and it didn’t let me down. I laughed all the way through it, especially when they were actually fighting and Stringer was on top of Avon yelling at him. Oh it is great. Here is the original video:

And here is the high pitch version: (I trimmed it a little because I just wanted the fight scene):

How I did it:

Well this was a bit of a struggle to make but eventually I got it. First I found the scene on YouTube and opened the Free YouTube Downloader that I have on my computer from when we were making our GIFs. I first downloaded the video as an AVI file. But that wouldn’t open right in MPEG Stream Clip. Then I re-downloaded it as an MP4 file. I opened this in MPEG Stream Clip in an attempt to trim it. However, I don’t know if it was too long or what but MPEG Stream Clip did NOT want to trim it for me. It kept crashing. So I decided to try to open the MP4 up in Windows Live Movie Maker and edit it there. After messing around for a little in Movie Maker I figured out how to trim it there. Then I tried to chipmunk-ify them in movie maker. I looked around a little and couldn’t figure it out. Speeding it up just made it hard to watch and listen to. So I googled it to see if you can adjust it in Movie Maker. I saw a few videos on how to do it but I guess I have a different version of Movie Maker than the one they were using so I couldn’t figure out how to do it. However, I knew that I could make it high pitched in Audacity. So I went back to Free YouTube Downloader and downloaded the same clip as an MP3 file. I imported that into audacity and went to Effect>Change Pitch and changed it so it sounded chimpmunk-y enough for me. Then I trimmed it to where I thought it would fit with my video. I imported it into movie maker and the sound was a couple seconds off from the video so I had to go back and trim the audio a little more in Audacity. The second time I trimmed it it fit perfectly! I was happy that it only took two tries to work. In order to post it on here I couldn’t just post the WMV file because it didn’t like that so I used zamzar.com to convert it to an MP4 file and downloaded to my computer and then uploaded it to my blog.

Anyway I am super, super happy with how this turned out and I hope it makes you laugh a little!

This is my music video for a classic 90’s song. I made of a video of what exactly comes to mind when I hear this song.

I had fun with this chipmunk style assignment. I chose a scene from episode 8 where the techie guy is joking around with his computer abilities. I thought it was one of the lighter moments in the season so I downloaded the video, cut it down to the scene I wanted on Mpeg Streamclip and then uploaded it to iMovie. There I sped up the video to give it the high pitch quality I wanted and voila! Fin!

2.5*

I made this video for the “Where do you want to go” assignment. I loved doing this assignment because all I want to do is travel. I have been so lucky in my life to have gone to many different places: Italy, Spain, England, Wales, etc. etc. My parents provided me with a worldy education to say the least and it created a sense of travel in me. I cannot be happy until I see the world, how others live and what they like. Everything is interesting when it is different: what they eat, drink, what art they have, what they read. Each country has a history complete with different art, politics, books and more. This is what I find so interesting and what I want to learn about. Traveling is about seeing certain places, but also learning about a group of people, and more about yourself in turn.

I have a bracelet with charms of countries I have been to and I love bringing things back from where I travel, and just little things, like scrap booking materials, notebooks and more. With each place I go I make a notebook of ticket stubs, paper scraps and photos, interspersed with notes of what I did. This helps me immerse myself in the place and remember it forever.

I read something the other day in a New York Times article by Stephanie Rosenbloom. She wrote, “There are orphaned things in the world — coins, books, fallen leaves — that when you chance upon them feel like winks from the universe. They are at once the most ubiquitous and intimate souvenirs. “Souvenir” comes from the French word for “remember.” Everything it represents, marks or makes you wonder exists as long as you live and remember. In this way the ultimate souvenir is not a coin. Or a book. Or even a thing as ancient and everlasting as a stone. It’s you.”

It’s kind of sappy, but I find it true. So I put in not only places I want to go to and buildings I want to see, but specific times, like the Christmas festival in Germany, and my favorite bookstore in the world, Shakespeare and Company in France (I have been there but wish to repeat the trip). I put in an airplane taking off noise at the beginning of the video and a landing plane at the end. In between I put in a song from my iTunes that I listen to whenever I travel. It just sounds like an adventure song and makes me feel like I can do anything.

So look and enjoy, and dream like me of seeing the world, pack on back and notebook in hand.

3*