My next assignment was Thumps Up for Ebert from the assignment bank. Usually, I don’t do assignments like this one, but it seemed interesting.

I wasn’t exactly sure where I would go with my tribute to Roger Ebert who passed away recently, so I started by browsing around on his site. I found this page about some of the best movies of the past 100 years. I figured this would be a fun way to pay tribute to him–string together some clips of the movies and some of his reviews of them. I picked three, Contact (1997), Fargo (1996), and Pulp Fiction (1994). I originally wanted to do more, but there were so few clips of the reviews of other movies I wanted to do, that I decided three would have to be enough.

Click here for links to all the videos that I used

I trimmed up most of the clips to make sure they were relevant and only snippets of the review. I didn’t want it to just repeat the actual reviews.

I think these three movies–and Ebert’s love for them–show his range of tastes. I think movie critics are often focused on one genre they like and hating all the others that aren’t “intelligent” enough. Ebert’s reviews of these three distinct films shows that he was not one-dimensional at all.

Once again, I used Adobe Premiere Pro.

I hope I didn’t go too far off the assignment’s description. I thought about showing the funny side of Ebert (but the clip quality was terrible) or maybe having music in the background (but god, that’s so depressing).

In any case, this is my small tribute to a guy I grew up watching on TV.

*Screenshot of my masterpiece in progress

I honestly do not know how to explicitly state how much I enjoyed doing this assignment! At first, it seemed really easy but not that wrong. However, I was really wrong about both!  It involved taking a music video of our choice (I picked Just  Give Me A Reason!) along with a movie, for which I choose Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind! We were suppose to integrate the two but not using still shots, and instead using actual videos from the two. Although this seemed easy at first, it was a lot harder because I had to make sure that whenever it would switch back to the actual music video, the voices were in-sync with the words and it was somewhat chaotic but definitely rewarding! I also learned how to iMovie and really learn how to cut/edit/etc.

Also, the actual music video had clips of P!NK and her beau, which I felt took away from the idea with the movie so I used my new amazing skills to cut and clip it so rather than seeing P!NK, it was Clementine and Joel! For those of you who haven’t seen the movie, it’s about a couple and how  one day they break up, so Clementine(the one with the wacky hair colors!) decides to have Joel erased from her memory with some new surgery. Once Joel finds this out, he decides that he wants to do the same but during it, he decides that he doesn’t actually want to forget about her and he attempts to stop the procedure. Definitely a beautiful movie, which is why I choose the song ‘Just Give Me A Reason’ because all he needed was a reason to believe that it wasn’t over! All in all, doing this as my first assignment was well worth it because it allowed me to learn a lot of the ins and outs of iMovie.

The most frustrating thing in the entire process was uploading it to youtube. When I was finally done pouring my heart and soul into this assignment, Youtube decided to step in and give me this gross page.

I guess it was problematic that I was using online clips, and somehow I was stepping on copyright issues. I tried to re-edit my video but then I realized two things, 1) why should I have to edit and redo my video? The whole purpose of Youtube is for people to upload videos, and I’m not in any way profiting from this video so what’s the big deal in uploading it? Ugh, it was the most frustrating thing ever! I honestly wanted to pull my hair out. Then I realized 2) that I would much rather use a website that allows to me upload things at my leisure and not stress out over whack-tube. Despite Youtube supposedly being for the people, it’s not! I don’t know to which degree people have to make sure that their videos don’t look like anyone else’s and the more I read on the lengths companies go to make sure you don’t use their copyrighted material, it was ridiculous. Honestly. Don’t get so uptight just because I remixed your video! I even put a disclaimer but no luck. So I happily went to Vimeo instead and decided to bookmark this experience. Anyways, here’s my video, which I OWN NOTHING OF EXCEPT THE ESSENTIAL SWEAT THAT WENT INTO MAKING IT! enjoy

For my third video assignment this week I did Inanimate Motion which was worth three stars. This assignment was to take an object that doesn’t move and put it together in a bunch of small clips to make it seem like it was moving.

When I was looking though examples for this I saw that a lot of people were using animals of some kind to make this and I decided I wanted to go in a bit of a different way.  I was in the middle of shipping a package to my friend and decided that I was going to use that as my inanimate object that I would make seem like it had motion.

To record this video I used an app on my iPhone called vine.  This app allows you to record a bunch of small clips just by touching your screen.  You have about seven seconds of video that you can record and each time you touch your screen it records what the camera is facing.  I wished that I could’ve made my video a little bit longer but I was pretty happy with how it turned out.

I started with the empty box and then added a few things at a time.  I wanted it to seem like things were multiplying in the box with each shot that I took.  I then closed the box up and took a video of the box from all its sides to make the box look like it was spinning.

Here is my finished video:

Nine stars down and seven to go!

Cooking Show 3 Stars!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzU27GbI-hw&feature=youtu.be

This assignment should have been more than 3 stars.  This is the one that took the most filming, editing, and time.  I added both an opening as well as credits.  I filmed with my webcam and my camera phone.  There was a lot of uploaded and time involved in this.

Once it was on movie maker I had to go through and cut out A LOT of material and insert a handful as well.  I added music and transitions along the way.

In this recipe I show the viewer how to make Pumpkin Maple Cupcakes from scratch.  It was easy to fill, but a pain to edit together.  I wanted it to me informational and fun.  I tried to include as much as I could without making it too long.  I got very frustrated while making this because of all the work that went into it.

I am so glad I finished it and I hope people like it was much as the effort I put into it.  I think people would be able to watch this and make the cupcakes themselves with out confusion.

For my first video assignment this week I did Movies by Numbers which was worth three stars. In this assignment you had to pick any number and then use pictures to show how it is used in the world around us.  After finding your pictures you had to then pick a song to go along with it and make them into a movie.

As soon as I found this assignment I knew that I had to do it.  I am currently OBSESSED with the song 22 by Taylor Swift (you are even going to see that song pop up again in another one of my video assignments later). So I obviously picked the number 22.  To find my pictures I started off by just simply google image searching the number 22.  I expected to have to look harder than that but I actually came across a ton of pictures that I wanted to use.

Once I got all of my pictures saved on my computer, I went a head and imported them into iMovie.  After getting the pictures in I uploaded the song 22 in as well.  I cut out the beginning of the song and just found parts of the chorus to put the pictures with.   I decided to do this because a three minute video of pictures of the number 22 would be quite extensive and while the whole song is about being 22 the chorus is the only part that really explicitly says the number 22.

After getting everything imported like I wanted, I went ahead and arranged the pictures in a way that I wanted and cut them a little bit here and there to make them flow better and so that it ended at the right part.

Here is my final product.  Hope you like it:

Three stars down and thirteen to go!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5kJt00icdo&feature=youtu.be

This video was based off an assignment we did a few weeks before these past 2 weeks.

I put my own music to the silent film that Charlie Chaplin did.  Using foley from my classmates and movie maker I was able to piece it all together.  The spin I took on was how “bright” people are in scary situations.  I did this by adding text and sarcasim to the clip.

I enjoyed making this video as well as watching it.  I think the twist I put on it is easy to understand and fun to watch.  If I were to do it again I think I would find a wider variety of music and sounds for the background to mimic the film so more.

Finally it all gets put together! A few weeks ago (it seriously seems like an eternity ago) we had to create our own sound effects for a Charlie Chaplin video, but we had to do it Foley style. Watching the video now, I was very glad that I was born in July and had to only do the first 30 seconds. Now for this video assignment, I faced the challenge of creating audio for the whole entire film by using my students sound effects to re-tell the story.

I found myself wondering how someone could possibly retell a story that has already been told. I mean the visual part can’t change, and we only have a few selections to pick from with each audio (if we even had any). So the reality of it all was the background music. So what vibe was I going to go for? A dramatic one of course! What?? Me? Dramatic??? You don’t say.

So I googled “dramatic classical music” I found O Fortuna by Carl Orff and I loved it for what I was trying to do. The only problem was that it was too short! However, it so happened that the music ended at an opportune moment, it’s like it was meant to be! So I was looking for clips of it on YouTube and ended up finding a concert that played another Carl Orff song after that was perfect for the mood. Seriously, it’s like it just said “Princess Karissa play me and use me!” All I had to do was cut out the applause (although I was pretending they were clapping for my awesome find), and I was good to go for the background music, now I just needed the sound effects.

I really enjoyed seeing everything that the students have to offer, I love checking out my fellow classmate’s work! I just really enjoy how the same 30 seconds can be seen so much differently to everyone doing the assignment, and expressed that way too. It’s just a cool thing to think about. So when it came to picking between all of these sound effects I ended up getting really excited with ones with talking. I’m not sure why, but it really just seemed to add a new perspective to the story so you could hear what he was thinking or saying.

With that being said, for the first 30 seconds I picked Kelsie’s clip, for the second 30 seconds I used Brooke’s clip, for the 3rd 30 seconds I used Brittany’s clip, and for the 4th 30 seconds I picked Kristen’s clip. Even though I am writing my post late, I actually did this video last week (I just haven’t had time to write things up recently), so the 5th and 6th sound clips had nothing, so I let the music tell the storytelling which I think actually went well.

Looking back at this assignment I was really pleased with how it turned out, and I do think that I was able to tell another story by using sounds.

Thanks for reading,

Princess Karissa

This is my Story 2 Stars!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7tZ-cEIqJg&feature=youtu.be

This was my favorite assignment to do these past two weeks.

It took me a while to come up with what I wanted to write on the index cards.  I was thinking a lot and bouncing ideas around.  Then I remembered all the random/uesless facts I know and decided to have fun with it.

I wanted it to be informational and fun so I put in person contents for each of the 5 facts.  I figured sense I was not speaking and most of the facts were animal related, that I would use circus music in the background.  It also helped with the fun and silly part of it.

I recorded myself on me lab top webcam and then loaded that into movie maker, where I add the music.