*Please be sure to have hard hats on!

For this assignment, my mom was actually the one to suggest ideas. The idea was to basically pick a topic, any topic, and make a 30 second documentary from it. My mom suggests that I pick something I am terrible at, and make a video from it. I really couldn’t decide between riding a bike and tying my shoes, but after recording both, I went with the latter. I really do struggle with this, and I usually get so frustrated that just end up tucking them into the sides my shoes. Although it sounds ridiculous, it’s 100% honest. When I was younger, my parents made me get these ugly boots and said I could pick my own next pair once i learned to tie my shoes…Well, being the rebellious child I was, I didn’t learn out of spite and ever since then, I just never put in the effort. Now whenever i try to learn, i just get frustrated and give up. For this, I recorded with my phone, and then uploaded it to iMovie. The background music is I Love It, just be ironic because trying my shoes is something I absolutely hate doing! If i get a chance, I’ll also upload the video of me riding a bike..Which is actually just disgraceful because I fell twice. This was a worthy four and 1/2 ?’s, and it was fun! I think making fun of myself also added some comedic relief and you can also laugh with me on it!

*under construction

This assignment allowed creativity to take over and for the fun to flow! The goal of this assignment was to pick an issue of whatever (silly, serious, etc.) and make a public service announcement. I decided to have fun with these assignments to let go and let fun do allll the work. I have to say that I am a HUGE The Office fan…so I decided to let it influence my work this week. My topic I decided would be that there are too many damn people on this planet, and we need to do something about it. Like yesterday. So, I started off by using KeepVid and downloading a couple videos, like one of crowds of people, then a song to go along with the entire video I Hate People (Yup, that’s a real song), and ending with my personal favorite one of Dwight, hating people. I used iMovie because it makes life sooooooo much easier, and I cut up the clips so that it includes each one of the scenes that I want, as well as the News Theme iMovie offers! I did find trouble during the text I wanted to put. i wanted it to be dramatic, and go slow but every time I tried to slow it down, it just wouldn’t seem to go as slow as I wanted it to so I just let it use the standard speed but even when I still try to change the duration time, it still seems to be iffy, so that’s something I hope to fix as I continue to use iMovie over time. However, i am still pleased with my product and I’m also happy to report that it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, but only because of how much practice I’ve been getting with iMovie. Anyways, this assignment was a wonderful five ?’s, here’s the final product and please like if you agree with Dwight and me!

*how the magic happens

This assignment required some deep thinking and soul searching. It was Movie Scenes that Changed Our Lives, and how it impacted our lives. This assignment proved to be much harder than it appeared. I started off with a movie that immediately caught me by the heart, The Pursuit of Happyness, in particular in the scene with the Will Smith and his son. The movie follows Christopher Gardner and the struggles he faces as he attempts to raise his son but also succeed in the world. This clip involves Gardner telling his son at first that he can’t play basketball, and when his son doesn’t object, he then proceeds to tell him that no one has the right to ever tell him he can’t do something. Will Smith has a tendency to leave me in complete awe, however, this scene in particular was really powerful because it’s something that everyone should take into account in their lives. No one has the right to ever tell you that you’re incapable of something or that you can’t do something, not even your own father, so why give them the satisfaction of seeing you break? This scene just reminds me of how i stay strong for myself, and that despite people telling me that I can’t, it gives me more reason to show them I can.

The second part of the video is a scene from Toy Story 3, and it was the basically the closing out of the entire trilogy. For those of you who don’t know these movies…You should probably get out from that rock you’ve been living under! Toy Story is possibly the movie of my generation. It’s about these toys that come alive when there are no adults alive but there’s so much more to it than that! Anyways, the scene that I chose was the one where Andy says good bye to all his toys, but Woody in particular. This might sound ridiculous but i honestly felt as if I saying good bye to my own childhood as Andy gave away Woody just because he’s meant to much to Andy over the years. Not to mention, I knew i would be graduating soon and i would have to say good-bye to a lot of things as well. It just hit close to home when Andy finally let go of what was left of his child hood so it broke my heart knowing that soon enough, that would be me.

The third clip I choose was from the movie Milk, based on Harvey Milk, an openly gay activist as well as politician during the 1970′s. The movie follows his life, and this particular scene had some comedic relief to it. Although Milk had just received a death threat, this did not stop him from standing on stage and giving his speech. He even teases the crowd and media some. This movie was very sentimental to me just because of my own sexual orientation and this scene in particular shows how Milk had no fears when it came to standing up for what he believed in. It made me see that while you can’t get along with everyone, it is much better to die for what you believe in before conforming to something that forces you to deny who and what you are.

The final part of this video is Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, which is basically a sequel to the original Alice in Wonderland, as she returns in Wonderland when she’s older. However, this scene in particular is a very encouraging one and actually something that i do now. Before she fights the Jabberwocky, Alice says six impossible things (before breakfast usually but this time before slaying the Jabberwocky). This is one of my MOST favorites because of how encouraging it is. Before I go into a game now, for rugby, I also think of six impossible things before going in because once you see that you accomplish them, you feel as though you’ve achieved something entirely new. Alice says these things to comfort her as she is fighting, and that exactly how I think now, I say six impossible things that I actually know i can achieve.

To do all of these videos, I downloaded these thinks (here, here, here, and here!) with KeepVid then I realized iMovie for all editing, cutting, and gluing together. This assignment was a wonderful five ?’s!

So for this assignment, we were supposed to make a documentary on something that lasted 30 seconds. The idea was to cram something that provided knowledge about something to other people into a short amount of time.  The process made you focus on the little important bits that gave the most information.

I was trying to do something that was lacrosse related, but I shaved off my mustache and separated my shoulder so I couldn’t do it.  So instead, I had to think of something else.  It took me a while to think about something, longer than I would have liked, so I eventually just gave up on thinking of something creative and went with something really, really lame.  How to cook peas.

Yes, the directions are on the bag.  Yes, I was making dinner.  Yes, I’m even disappointed in myself, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do.  I assembled everything in iMovie again, which I’m definitely getting a good feel for–everything is getting really easy and quick.  The filming was done on my iPhone, which is currently my best friend as of late.  Here’s my final video.

In retrospect, I really wish I had thought of something better.  I separated my shoulder the day before so I really just wasn’t in a very creative mood.  Still feel the same way.  Can’t always perform your best.

One afternoon, the Fandom Princess was lounging around on her bed, reading a book about a talking rabbit who wanted to be a knight, when she heard three loud knocks at her chamber door. Ghost instantly bounded towards the door and barked. The Princess followed him and opened the door to find that there was nobody there. Instead, placed right on the floor, there was a beautiful bouquet of different colored roses and lilies.

“How sweet,”the Princess said.
She reached down to pick them up and brought them back inside her chambers and into her room she found a little note card that said say the magic words: Tell me of love songs.

She spoke the words, and when she did, the flowers began to suddenly move. Then all in unison, they began to sing in harmony. It was such a beautiful sort of song that the Princess and Ghost both stared at the flowers as it was new treasure. And it was indeed!

She never found out who gave her the singing flowers, but nonetheless, she cared and tendered for them just the same. And for the next few Moon cycles, whenever the Princess was feeling down, or if she was missing her beloved Prince, she would speak the magic words and listen to the lovely flowers sing her songs of love and hope. Well, to kick off this week’s video assignments, I decided to start out easy on myself. Probably the best way to go, since this video stuff is going to prove challenging. Anyway, I decided to start off with an easy 2-star assignment called Lip Synch Your Favorite Song. Now, a little background on this video before I jump into the technical stuff.

My friend Candace is a fan and kind of in love with Ke$ha. Not in the sense that she thinks she’s a good singer or anything like that, thank God, but she likes her style and thinks she’s kind of fun. Whatever, to each his (or her) own. We got bored one day and decided to look up parodies to any of her songs, which is what we like to do a lot of the time. I should add here that I am a big fan of, when I’m procrastinating, lip synching like a fool to songs, so this assignment really was going to be easy.

Anyway, back to the story. We found this video of two girls who had parodied the Ke$ha song “Tik Tok” and it made us die of laughter. We decided that we would try to imitate that video because we loved how the two girls in it were dancing and acting out the lyrics to the song as well as actually lip synching it (we struggled there for a moment with that because we got so caught up in dancing that sometimes we would forget to actually lip synch. The whole process of filming actually took a really long time, let me tell you.)

So, we found some clothes of ours to imitate the two girls, had our other friend, Jane Claire, play the song for us, and also asked if she would be responsible for recording the video for us as well. We next had to practice by watching the video countless times to make sure that we would get everything correct, down to the last action that was going on in the video. We would watch the video, then film a bit, watch it, then film, then, as we realized that wasn’t working out as effortlessly as we would have wanted, we decided to just try and film the whole thing all the way through.

From there, we didn’t really need to edit anything, and we were pretty proud of the end result:

This video tells a story in multiple ways, in my opinion. Not only are we retelling the story that the actual song is telling, but by reenacting the interpretation of the two girls in the parody and adding our own spin on it, we were able to tell a slightly different story that still managed to stay along the same story line!

2 Princess Stars

For my LAST video assignment I did five second film which was worth four and a half stars.  This assignment was to “make a supershort, 5-second film; basically enough time for one gag, bit, or joke.”

My family stopped by to visit this past weekend so I used my sisters to help me make this video.   I decided not to have a set plan for this one because it would have ended up being awkward and not even kind of funny if we had one.  We are plenty goofy enough without having a plan.

To record this video I used the iPhone app vine.  I talked about this app in an earlier post and explained exactly how you used it.

We were celebrating one of my sisters sixteenth birthday while she was here so the reason she has things like a crown and ribbon on is because of that.  She also is in LOVE with One Direction (which she will hate me if she knows I shared that on here) so she got a preteen magazine all about them as one of her gifts.  The five second video I ended up recording was her reading a part of an article out of her magazine about them.  After her reading that I took a short video of my other sister and my friend who were in the room which I think is what sells the video.

Hope you enjoy it!!

That’s seventeen and a half stars!!

For my next video assignment I did song visualization which is worth two stars. This assignment was to “pick a song (or a minute from a song) and create a video that displays pictures that tell a story with the lyrics.”

For my song I picked Red by Taylor Swift.

I chose this song because I love Taylor obviously and because there are a lot of great visualization in this song.  She is very literal with her explanations through out the song which I knew would be great for making a visualization video.

To start this assignment I first picked with part of the song I wanted to do.  I decided to just simply start with the beginning and go for about a minute. This put me with the first verse and the chorus.   I then started google image searching to find pictures that would work out well for each part of the song. Some of the pictures were super easy to find like the colors but some where a bit harder.  I had to be creative to find a picture to represent things like feelings and emotions.  In the end I pretty happy with what I found (even if some are a bit obscure).

After finding all my pictures I then upload them into iMovie in the order of the song.  I then put in the song and started cutting the pictures so that they would match the lyrics at the right time.  For this assignment I didn’t have too much trouble with the cutting and editing because I have done it quite a few times now.

Here is my final song visualization for Red by Taylor Swift:

Thirteen stars down and three to go!

*work in progress!

I really enjoyed this assignment just because it involved doing a recording and over the course of DS106, I have gotten extremely comfortable infront of the camera! This assignment is called I am me, and you’re suppose to make a video that represents you to your fellow DS106′ers through whatever means necessary (videos, pictures, etc.). I decided to make an intro video but also follow the example given, and use some photos towards the end. I used iMovie as my means for making this project, and since I’ve been toying around with it for awhile, I’m getting used to more and more with each use. I had re-record a couple of times because I kept laughing to myself but it got easier after awhile. Next time,though, I think I will truly test my skills and see if i can take my all my snipbits and make a full video from them? I attempted that buuut it didn’t exactly work out. However, I still managed to make a complete video for this assignment! I also decided to get a little fancy and add a soundtrack to the video montage (Who Says?) This video assignment was worth four and 1/2 ?’s, which is understandable since it involves recording yourself but also being creative with adding in features (like a recording and photos!). The best part is that Youtube didn’t try to stop me this time from uploading it! (surprise, surprise!) Here is my I am me video!