This just in: new, raw footage of the famous HGTV star Patricia Wellington has recently surfaced in the media. We see here the roots of her budding career, and the only glimpse of the fabled “Susan” anyone has ever captured. This video is from her audition to the show that never aired: HGTV’s Collegiate Bathroom Tours.

This video was made based on the Sardonic Tour assignment. I chose to do my dorm bathroom, because while I don’t hate it, I can definitely say that I won’t miss it when I move out in a few weeks. I tried not to take this too seriously and lose the humor of the video, so there are parts where I could have redone the shot, but I chose not to. I do wish I could edit out my suite mates talking in their room or “Susan” laughing at me for most of the video.

I had a hard time finding a good free video editing program. Open Shot would freeze for a whole minute anytime I tried to make a cut or move a video, and Avid Media Composer|First wouldn’t even install (it’s not meant for Windows 10 sadly). So, I just stuck with Windows Movie Maker.

Making this video was super fun and hilarious, though I’m not sure if it will be funny to anyone but my roommate and I, but here I go putting out into the world to judge.

In order to produce this video, I used Premiere which gave me the opportunity to add music along with my voiceover of the poem called Roads We Travel by Marilyn Lott. I’m not familiar with her other work or sure if she has any other work but I found this poem online and really like the message of it. This is past footage that I had on my flash drive and decided to put it to good use. Last week I found a website that provides free music and it’s really great sounding as well. It’s called Epidemic Sound, and provides legit music. I enjoyed putting this together!

I was pretty excited to work on this last project with my new found awesome editing software. I chose to do a variation of the Serenity Now challenge. I listen to guided mediation on YouTube on a regular basis, so that makes be qualify to create one, right? …..Right?  

Fairly repetitive in the process for this one. Y2mate to download YouTube videos. Freesound for musical content. Samsung Galaxy s6 for voice recording. For new skills acquired – I learned to use the VSDC software to separate video and audio files and isolate each for editing, control the decibel levels of individual audio files, and edit a sprite after it had already been combined. 

Now come chill out with after this long week – you’ve earned it. 

After my first stumbling block with Windows Movie Maker, I ran into a brick wall for the my second project, “Where do your shoes take you?” the Window Movie Maker audio component wasn’t working at all. This baffled me, as I had just used the system yesterday without any difficulty, but after trying to find a quick fix via google, I decided it was time to try another editing software. 

First I tried Lightworks, it was highly recommend as professional grade software, but I skipped over the part of the review warning about it being “intimidating”. As soon as I finished installed it, I knew I was in trouble. So many buttons, and options, and how do I piece together several clips, and how do I add audio – ahhhhhhhh, help!! UNINSTALL. 

For the second search, I included, user friendly as a qualifier and discovered VSDC Video Editor. after installing this program, I still had a few questions to get started, but the program directed me quickly and easily to tutorials. Now we are in business. And a vast upgrade from the 2.6 Windows Movie Maker. 

I uploaded all my clips and opted to supply sound effects collected from Freesound  for the first two scenes. then I wanted a fun, upbeat song that reflected my pace of day. I searched for royalty free music and came across Bensound. I chose a jazzy little number and over laid it from the point I put on my blue suede shoes. I left the video audio intact for the kitchen and elevator scenes to provide contrast and a sense of waiting. 

Finally, I added the closing credits and extended the music until the end of these. This title and caption editing was so much better tha nthe Windows Movie Maker. I could place the text any where on the screen. I settled on a classic black and white and centered to play off the quirky music. 

I enjoyed this project more than I thought I would, which I credit greatly to the software. Being able to produce a higher quality final production really boosts a girl’s mood! The one thing I would really like to master on the next go round is turning the camera image. I filmed these landscape, but because it facing the floor the majority of time, it uploaded horizontal. I just need to figure out that rotation within the editor……

For my first project this week, I chose to create an intro to a movie about my superhero Khatyrka. As some of you might recall, I created a poster for the movie a few weeks back. 

 I’ve now constructed the first scenes of the movie with opening credits. 

I began with the vision of showcasing the Russian Siberian mountains where Khatyrka’s story originates. I was partially inspired by other DS106 students who used landscape imaginary to begin their title sequences. However, I realized quite quickly that I did not want to have a voice-over explaining the story. I wanted a more organic and modern introduction to the movie. 

I thought I could open with the landscape and cut to a little girl laying on the ground in the mountains staring at the night night sky. this image proved very difficult to find, but lead me to some stock videos of a woman falling back on grass in slow motion. I decided to change the scene to a dream like sequence where we see Khatyrka in a park falling into a trance like flashback. 

My next obstacle was the stock video itself. I did not want to pay for the video and did not want the watermark on my final project, so I decided to search you tube for a similar image. This again proved unfruitful. At this point, my direction changed again to search for a woman sleeping and waking. I by chance stumbled upon a video clip from the show NCIS of a character having a PTSD nightmare. The character matched Khatyrka’s description, and the scene captured the idea that Khatyrka has a past even she is unsure of. 

Once the creative vision was in place, the technical work began. I downloaded the NCIS video as well as two scenic videos from YouTube using Y2mate and then converted the MP4 files to AVI files using Online-Convert. I selected haunting musical sounds from FreeSound, and import all the files to Windows Movie Maker. Once imported, the files were sliced, cropped, and layered to create the a (relatively) seamless video and audio. Finally, I added the opening credits and aligned them with the tone and start of the audio. At this point, I did realize however that the latest version (2012?) of Windows Movie Maker is no longer available for download. I was working with the 2.6 version which was much more limiting than the tutorials I found for the latest version. For instance, I really wanted to move the credits information to the bottom of the screen, but the system appears to only allow centering the title cards. 

In the end, I am pleased with the results, especially given the technology and very pleased with my new found ability to mute segments of sound within the audio portion of the video. 

This is my last assignment for this week and I had a lot of fun making it! I’ve made a Gordon Ramsay creation previously for this class and I thought why not continue that since he’s a person I not only look up to but laugh with. There are a lot of videos of things Gordon Ramsay says already bleeped out but I thought that would be too easy so I used the UK episodes which aren’t already censored. Then I downloaded different Mario Bros. sounds from Youtube. All things we’re downloaded from YouTube and then edited using Premiere. The hardest part was lowering the volume to censor Ramsay because the keyframes had to be added so quickly and close together since it’s only a short amount of sound. Overall, it was an interesting experience and I’ve learned even more about using Premiere and editing! I would do this again for other videos, no doubt about it!