video – Assignment Bank

Tending to My Cherry Red

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Once again I’m employing my DS106 time saver maxim to Reduce – Reuse – Recycle by creating a video that takes a close look at the food we eat (for DS106 daily create TDC 633) with photos and footage I had already taken. This time it’s with my favorite birthday cake which has made several appearances in daily creates and other digital storytelling projects.

This beauty had to make another repeat appearance since fellow DS106er Stephanie Jeske was unable to view the time lapse video of me frosting my cake a few weeks back. I use a small section of ZZ Top’s Cherry Red as the sound track and YouTube in Germany has blocked it because of copyrighted content. I’m using an even longer section this time, but I’ve uploaded the video directly to my website, so no autobot is going to block it.

UPDATE 11/2/13: Just discovered there’s a video assignment for this type of project VideoAssignments1024. Yay! Yet another Reduce-Reuse-Recycle for this one.

How it was made.

There are a number of sections to this video that was assembled in Adobe Premiere Elements 12: Intro GIF, Time Lapse, Still Photos, Outro GIF.

The GIF at the beginning of DJ licking the frosting off of the number 2 that was on his cake was made with two photos taken fairly close together. They weren’t close enough to make a smooth GIF right away. I ended up doing some work in photoshop to adjust the size and skew of the photos so that they blended more when flashed from one to the other.

Using the Lapse It Pro app I photographed myself frosting the cake. In reality it took about 20 minutes (551 frames) that was reduced to 46 sec when all was said and done. The app did all the work. I just set my iPhone up on a tripod and went to work using the default settings since this was my first time out using this app.

2 yr old’s beauty

The cake really did look beautiful when I had finished, just like the one I made for DJ’s second birthday. But I made a fatal error by frosting the cake while it was still warm. I was in a hurry to get to my birthday massage and for some reason was driven to take the time lapse photography right then and there. Why I couldn’t wait is a mystery to me now that a little over a month has past since I made it.

Aaahhh! It melted!

When I returned from my massage, I removed the cake from the refrigerator and this is what it looked like. To my horror my beautiful cake had melted. I briefly thought about throwing it out and starting all over again. But I didn’t want to do all that work again. It was my birthday and I wanted to play, enjoy myself, go get my hair done….. While I was running around having fun I came up with a brilliant idea on how I could pass off this monstrosity as something creative- if nothing else.

At 51 you’re showing your age.

My guests are accustomed to this gluten-free birthday cake and had just a few weeks earlier joined in the celebration of DJ’s second birthday. Of course a 2 year old’s cake would look fresh and new, no wrinkles or bags, or cracks showing through. But a 51 year old’s cake? Now that’s a different story. They all laughed and dug in. It still tasted just as good and moist as it always does. And really…. by the time I get it on their plates it’s a mess anyway.

51 in all her glory. No shame required.

The final GIF segment of the video clip was made with a series of still photos as I turned the cake slowly around in a circle. For a first time effort, it’s not too bad. (Note to self… Next time have a marker of some sort on the counter top so I can line up the placement of the object from shot to shot.) The photos were uploaded to Photoshop, assembled as separate layers into one file and turned into an animated GIF.

Music Attribution:

I certainly will give credit where credit is due though, and wish to express my appreciation to ZZ Top for making such good music. You can buy “Cherry Red” on

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Etude de la Musique

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A study of music….

Music is a powerful force that can change the mood and even the meaning of a video. I’ve been wanting to illustrate this concept for awhile and when I saw the tweet and original video created by Brian Bennett I knew this was my opportunity. Because of the video’s simplicity with one on-going activity (Brian painting a room) as the viewer moves through different styles of music one can feel the effects of each piece as it relates to how the video is experienced emotionally.

Watch & listen to the original video by Brian Bennett & read his blog post here.

“A Study of Music” illustrating the power of audio.

Brian and I talked about the power of music and we both thought there was/should be a ds106 audio assignment that did this, but we didn’t find one. I tweeted Brian (@bennettscience) that I had wanted do this sort of video and put up an assignment, but didn’t have a good illustrative video to use as an example yet. I asked if he’d mind me using his. It was no problem. Now one of us just needs to write up and submit the assignment.[UPDATE: AudioAssignments1193 has been created and ready for you to try.]

This music video was very simple to make. I knew that I wanted a variety of music styles: soundeffectish, comedic, dramatic, simple, complex, ect. Figuring out how to search on the freemusicarchive.org site took a little time, since this was only my second time visiting. But once I had my key words down I was able to locate about 15 songs that I thought might work and downloaded them. I was able to keep track of the artists names and songs for later attribution from their file names. That was a nice bonus, as properly siting my sources can be a real headache and time hog as I try to rekindle my search logic when I found them the first time around. HINT: To keep track of sources pulled from the internet, create a new post, keep it in draft mode, and copy & paste all of your links with a summary of what they are into the awaiting post. When it comes time to write up your post you already have a big chunk completed, and no retracing your steps.

B. Bennett painting room time lapse video

Once I had the songs it was a matter of placing them onto the timeline and seeing what fit where. (I used Adobe Premiere 11 as my video editing software.) Making effective transitions between the pieces of video and music are important so that the viewer is not distracted or irritated, but instead able to easily go with the flow. Fortunately, I didn’t have to resort to my first plans of chopping into the video and adding fade to black transitions with each change of music. As I worked with the media I noticed there were natural transition points that I could use instead. That made it an even more powerful illustration because there was a continuos visual flow.

Having Brian’s original music, My One True Love by Ben Saretan remaining at the beginning, middle, and end of the video was important to me. As with many of my projects, I continue to be amazed at how things can miraculously fall into place. And that was certainly the case here as I noticed and worked with the natural transitions. Brian’s music remained in the locations I had intended and the music selections on either side “made sense”. There is a nice flow both from a visual and auditory perspective.

Did you experience the video segments differently as I had intended? What emotions did they bring up? Which music selection(s) did you enjoy more? [Start time links provided below.] Did you feel that one song was more suited to Brian’s video throughout? Why? I’d be very interested to hear your reactions and comments to the piece.

All music licensed under Creative Commons from freemusicarchive.org

[0:00] My One True Love by Ben Sereten http://www.benseretan.com
[0:22] Doll War by Ergo Phizmiz http://www.ergophizmiz.net
[0:33] Calvin & Hobbes by Johhny Ripper http://johnnyripper.bandcamp.com/
[0:43] CPU Talk by BoxCat Games http://box-cat.com/
[0:57] The Crosses of Annagh. The Humors of Tulla by Slainte
[1:10] Red in Black by Kosta T https://soundcloud.com/konstantin-trokay
[1:21] My One True Love by Ben Sereten http://www.benseretan.com
[1:42] Maple Leaf Rag by Scott Joplin (Public Domain)
[2:03] Biplane by Podington Bear http://podingtonbear.com/
[2:30] UISTS by XPURM http://www.xpurm.com/
[2:49] My One True Love by Ben Sereten http://www.benseretan.com

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Wuff Wuff or Dancing Sisters

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You think I am just a stuffed animal. I AM NOT!!!

OK, when I was found by my friend Hanna I actually hung around on a stand for stuffed animals, by mistake, naturally, but this didn’t mean anything and Hanna knew this.

I was called Herr Hund and became part of the sister’s life. One day they had the idea to perform a dance for a charity event together with some kids. I really was utterly embarrassed of this idea, but then after some while I had the wish to join.

Hanna taught me how to tap dance and that it was. I also recommended to the sisters that they should have feathers on their heads, like dancers have to have, but they didn’t want. I have to admit I was a bit disappointed of this rejection of a really good idea, but then I just put a feather on my head which looked very nice.

A friend of Hanna made a video of us. Enjoy :)

Making of the video:

I used a tripod to position a camera in front of my screen. Then I fixed the dog puppet on a stick. I started a youtube video clip and the same time I started the video recording option of my camera.
I took the puppet and let it dance. I tried to make it coherent with what you can see in the video and I added wuffs with my voice. It was funny to watch how I had to dance to make the dog dance. I even get a bit out of breath.

The video I’ve used, is “Um Himmels Willen – Nackte Tatsachen”. This is a German show about sisters and a town in the south of Germany, where many people are Catholic.

The corresponding video assignment asked for making a video with a clip and a puppet, where you can either use the green screen technique or let your puppet appear in front of a playing video.

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Supercut Frasier

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I was having a really difficult time thinking of a phrase or theme to super cut in one of my favorite shows, which is hilarious because as soon as I decided on this one it was relatively simple to find examples of Frasier screaming at his brother, Niles. This was by far one of the most entertaining assignments to do, because it involved watching Frasier, which I do on a regular basis anyway.

At this point in the semester, I had myself worked into a routine for each specific assignment. I always first find my clips, and then download them to my computer. From there, I edit segments in MPEG Streamclip because I find it really simple to do with this program. After this I would put everything together in VideoPad. I usually like to put in final edits, like music or transitions, using YouTube editor. That’s how I did this.

A lot of the good video editing softwares that were recommended weren’t compatible with my XP so that’s why I ended up using VideoPad, which was relatively difficult to get the hang of. Lesson learned though, and as soon as this class is over, I’m formatting my computer so I can get all the cool stuff.

Here is the clip:

5 stars

Assignment Page

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Audacity Tutorial

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Ok here is my Software Angel Assignment. I decided to create a basic tutorial on Audacity. As you can see I had a few hiccups but everything went alright for the most part. I used FastStone Capture to complete this assignment. Where to get it and how to use it will be my second tutorial. I hope it helps people. I do warn you it is longer than I hoped. It’s 17 minutes and I barely scratched the surface.

Star Count:

Mashup: 4/5

Video: 3/10

Remix: 0/5

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Show Off DS106 Work

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For this “Show Off” assignment, I made a compilation of some of my work from the summer. I added a variety of my assignments and edited them in iMovie.

Here is a screenshot of the process.

And here is my video.

Difficulty: 5 stars

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Punched in the Face

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For my One Archetype, Five Movies, Five Seconds assignment I chose the archetype of people getting hit in the face. Constructing the short compilation of these videos was easy in iMovie. I had to mess with the sound levels a bit to make sure the scene at the end didn’t destroy anyones ear drums. Let me know what you think.

These are the original videos.

Here is a screenshot of the process.

My video…

Difficulty: 3 1/2 stars

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Animal Dance Off

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This is an assignment I created called “Animal Dance Off”. I had a really good time making the example and I think the final product turned out very well. All I had to do to create this video was to cut the audio from the Chris Brown song (polka version) and add it to the video of dancing geckos. It was a bit more difficult to get the geckos to move to the beat of the song, but after cutting and copying a few clips and then fast-forwarding pieces it came together pretty well.

I used these two videos to mash up the audio and video.

And a screenshot of the process.

Hope you enjoy my version.

Difficulty: 3 stars

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Remembering is easy…now in video

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Without further ado….

After a long and…arduous journey the Don’t text and Drive spot I’m affectionately (and creatively) calling “Forget” is now in video form. There were countless snafus and issues but in the end I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I could tweak it forever. That’s the hardest part of the creative process…knowing when to call something finished…

This project was a lot of fun and originated with the Sound Effects story assignment. You can see my blog post about that here. Thanks to my sister Jen for volunteering to be run over for the common good. I think this also qualifies as a PSA Assignment.

Behind the Scenes

Basically this was a small production…my sister and I. It was shot on the Sony EX3, Canon 60D and Go Pro Hero3. The interior driving shots were shot against a green screen for safety sake and background plates shot with the Hero3.

One of the hardest visual effects shots to pull off believably has to be the driving composite. So tough to match the exposures so when the interior is properly exposed, the background is blown out and blurred appropriately. I think I did ok here. In the future I think it would be immensely helpful to have someone help shake the car while filming to give an more realistic sense of motion.

Also, due to circumstances beyond my control – the entire neighborhood thought it’d be fun to mow the lawn while we were filming, all the audio has been recreated in post using clips I recorded as well as clips from freesound.org.

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Week 4 Summary Found!

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Well I found this hiding in my drafts. To be honest I never double check if it was published because I was in such a hurry. I went to post one of my assignments tonight and found that this was a draft that was never published. I dunno what happened, probably something to do with my scattered brain. Since I didn’t do it when I originally posted, the files are also now on youtube. I don’t know how much credit I’ll get for last week but here’s the original post. As before the original is in black and new in blue.

Wow did I get my butt handed to me. Editing video took me much longer than I expected. That and uploading seemed to be a bit of a pain in rear. WordPress is really giving me trouble. The “auto imbed” feature of Jet pack doesn’t like me. (6/19 this was fixed) Of course with me being up in Ohio, it was rather difficult to get most of this done in a decent manner. Well here it is folks hope you enjoy.

Mortar to the sound of Sabre’s

This assignment was the “Inanimate Motion” Assignment. I decided to have fun with my new mortar and pestle. This reminded me of making a gif, but having the ability to give it audio.

What Makes you laugh?

This one is self explanatory. I love this movie. It has some of the best one-liners.

Simple DSLR tutorial…I mean really simple.

Ok most parents have a learning curve with technology, especially things with lots of buttons and functions. My DSLR is one of them. Yes, they aren’t that complex….but if you’re used to a kodak disposable…well that’s a different story. Though in my mother’s defence she is not the only one who has mashed the mode knob and was confused why it wouldn’t take the picture.

What skills you got?

Ok i decided taking a video of me taking pictures would be boring. So I decided to show off some of my gear and my finished works. I know similar pictures may be on the web, but I assure you, every picture in this video I personally pushed the shutter button.