The purpose of this assignment was to combine two movie scenes in which one scene looks as if it is watching the other movie scene. After completing the project it came out pretty realistic as if she was watching the movie. The two movies I chose were from Saving Private Ryan and The Fifth Element. I’m sure if you seen both movies then this movie mashup would make quite the impression. To complete the project I used the program iMovie on the mac to cut up the scenes and edit them. I downloaded the clips off from youtube.
What if Samantha didn’t kill every one in The Ring? Well then chances are Adam Sanlder directed it. For this assignment I took a clip from the ring, and one from Anger Management, and using imovie placed the two together.
Airplane! and its sequel are two of the funniest movies of all time in my opinion. I don’t need super dirty scenes and vulgar language to make me laugh. The simplest way to make me laugh is to just play with words. Throughout Airplane! and it’s sequel is the best sort of word play I have ever heard. Furthermore, I am constantly referring to the movies and quoting them around people. My family got me started on Airplane! at an early age, and to this day I am spoiled and turn my nose up at most comedies. Not too many movies, especially recently, have even come close. Here is a clip from Airplane! The Sequel that I captioned for the “What Makes You Laugh” assignment. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!
The first assignment I did these two weeks was Play by Play. I really enjoyed inserting my own commentary into a video that I watched. It was a cool experience to have my own input and to hear it play outloud.
The second assignment I did this week was Return to the Silent Era. It was really fun to turn a trailer for a movie and make it “silent movie-esque.” It took a lot of time to add all of the captions to the video, but it turned out really well and flowed easily from one phrase to the next.
The third assignment I did this week was Character/Genre Mashup. This was definitely my favorite assignment of these past two weeks but absolutely took the longest. It took forever to search through videos to find ONE scene (sometimes two) that I wanted. Each clip lasted about 10 seconds or so, which meant having to find quite a few to cover a song that lasts about three and a half minutes.
Reflection
It was really cool being able to tell stories through video this week. I found that it was exciting to see what kind of changes I could make that would impact everything about that particular video.
Get the Beatles reference? If you don’t, promptly YouTube search the song “Hello, Goodbye” by the Beatles before continuing to read. There really is no excuse. Anyways, I first heard about the origins of the word goodbye from a Spanish professor explaining why people say “adios” in Spanish. He explained that it wasn’t uncommon in many other languages to reference a deity when wishing a person good fortune in their travels from you. In English, it is said that the word goodbye is a sort of mashup of the words “God be with ye.” So when I read the assignment description for Vernacular Video, it took me a while, but I remembered what my professor had said about goodbye, and decided to use it. I immediately wanted to flip flash cards for the assignment, as if to portray a feeling of studying off of them. It was hard to read the cards and shoot the video at the same time, so I had my friend Victor flip the cards and shoot the video while I read. The main problem was my horrible stuttering again. I try so hard, but I’m just a natural stutterer. I’m not as bad as I used to be, but it still frustrates me, and when I get frustrated, I stutter. It’s a vicious cycle. Regardless, the point of the assignment was to tell the history of a word in an interesting way, and I feel accomplished. Ta Dah!
The “McGangbang” is a food product made out of two McDonald’s sandwiches off of the dollar menu that causes much controversy amongst people who like to cause controversy over stupid things. People will argue with you about many different things, including where it originates, what goes in it, and what the name of it is. This has made me come up with the subgroup of the sandwich called the “Virginia McGangbang.”
I feel like it’s important to point out that I do not condone the name of the sandwich, but this brings me to my first point. The sandwich is actually recognized by the name “McGangbang” in many McDonald’s (especially in my area), so much so that you can actually order it by name. People can literally walk up to the counter and say “I’ll have a McGangbang,” and the person will make it for you, without the extra bread. Thus, the name sticks.
Most people agree that the sandwich originates from Daytona Beach, Florida, where you take a Spicy McChicken sandwich, and put it between the patties of a McDouble. The main problem with this, is that not all McDonald’s carry Spicy McChickens. Thus, the variations come in to spice up the sandwich. The most important concept, is the fundamental blueprint of using sandwiches off of the dollar menu, and combining them.
The way I was taught to make it the first time, is the way I stick to making it. I actually thoroughly enjoy this artery clogging sensation enough to make it from time to time. I was told to buy a McDouble, and add the Big Mac sauce (Mac Sauce for short). You also buy a McChicken and add cheese, because heck, who doesn’t want more cheese? You then split the patties down the middle and insert your McChicken sandwich into the middle, and mash it together. The result is a beefy, chicken-y goodness that can only come from the mind of a broke college student who was tired of eating the same things every day. Another development is that the McGangbang has led to the creation of a more expensive and larger sandwich entitled the “Man Sandwich” that you can also order by name at many McDonalds. The concept of ordering off of the dollar menu is neglected, but the same principle of splitting patties and adding chicken sandwiches is there. The Man Sandwich is consisted of a Double Quarter-Pounder with Cheese; add Mac Sauce, and a Country Style Chicken Sandwich; add cheese.
When I read the requirements for the assignment Cooking Show, I felt almost entitled to share this delectable treat with the DS106 world. My friend Victor and I set off to the nearest McDonald’s, and acted out the making of this food of Gods. I asked my friend to use a recording technique where he comes up from behind me, and then sits down at the table, as almost personable, yet had an almost Nightly News feel to it. I asked him to shoot the scene lower than usual to emphasize the sandwich, and then raise up and emphasize me at the conclusion. Before he began recording, I thought it would be funny to use the receipt as a scene card. I feel like the effects worked well to give me the look I was looking for. One more point, I can’t stop laughing in these videos. Enjoy!
For this assignment we had to collect a few movie scenes that made a real impact on our lives. It could’ve been any type of emotion. To do this project I downloaded some clips from YouTube. I used the program windows movie maker to connect the scene and add my own audio voice over narration for each scene. Wasn’t too difficult just had to remember some memorable movie scenes. My favorite scene was the scene I saved for last.
This class assignment was to create a short movie supercut about movies scenes which has a certain connection. It could be any connection such as a rain scene or slow motion scene or laughing. For my supercut I chose to use scenes where the actors/actresses smash through glass. Most movie scenes have these relating scenes. I used iMovie to edit the clips that I downloaded from youtube. It was pretty simple the program is very user friendly. This assignment can be found in the Video Assignments for ds106. Most of the scenes are from well known hollywood films.
The dawn of cinema had no audio; silent movies created an atmosphere with music and the use of cue cards. Take a 3-5 minute trailer of a modern movie and render it in the form os the silent era- convert to black and white, add effects to make it look antiquated, replace the audio with a musical sound track, and add title cards for the dialogue. As a prime example, see Silent Star Wars.
This is one of the assignments that I chose to do the preparation work on in Week 10. I found it was harder than I expected to find Moulin Rouge clips online – the copyright hounds have been hard at work for this movie. I did, however, manage to find a great little scene from when Christian and Satine meet. The scene and the conversation are both filled with complete confusion, and is definitely a classic from the film. I love how the setting of the movie already creates a feel of the era that I’m trying to capture for this assignment – the silent film era.
For the music, I wanted something bouncy and old-timey and fun, to capture the feel of the scene. I went to Incompetech as the assignment page suggested, and downloaded Betty McFaddin’s piano piece.
For the title cards, I did a google image search, also as suggested in the assignment description. I scrolled through the images and selected the one I liked. I saved it to my working file on my computer, and then went on to take a look at where the card came from. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Google had lead me to ds106′s own Michael Branson Smith‘s blog and Return to the Silent Era Assignment post! I decided to stick with my choice, and send the appropriate nod of appreciation to the fellow ds106er in my blog and in my credits.
Next came the task of trying to figure out how to actually put this thing together. I began doing research, and began to get frustrated with how much can be done with video on a Mac, and how little can be done on a PC. Finally, I went to twitter, and browsed the #ds106 hashtag. Eventually, I found that fellow ds106er Lauren had used Windows Live Movie Maker to make her silent era clip.
Thanks, Lauren! I was literally about to give up on the project completely and start a new one, despite the prep work I’d done on this one.
So I downloaded Movie Maker (and opted out of all of the 5 million other programs it tried to give me ). I had already shorted the YouTube clip (which I downloaded using the KeepVid KeepIt button I put on my browser toolbar), using MPEG Streamclip, to get just the parts I wanted. I uploaded the music into the video, created a Title page and ending Credits, and uploaded the blank silent movie title card from Michael Branson, and copied and then pasted it a bunch of times so I could have it available each time I split the video.
I already had the script out, so I zoomed in on the clip and began hunting for the appropriate split moments, and inserted the blank title cards there. I used Viner Hand IT font, just to be different and fun. I also made the clip black and white, and changed the ratio to 4:3, because in one of the assignments I’d reviewed, I had read that this was standard of the silent movie era (I admit to having no idea whether it’s true or not, but it looked neat when I tried it, so I kept it). I regretted not being able to do more to the clip to make it look old. Stupid Windows. But whatever. Do what you can with what you’ve got, right? Finally, I went through the final video and found the clips where there was only dancing and no talking. These I sped up to 1.25x normal speed. I was surprised to see how ridiculous it looked any faster than that, and pleased with 1.25x.
I had about 5,000 crashes of Windows Movie Maker while trying to make this. I learned to save literally after every click. ‘Select font, Ctrl+S, Type, Ctrl+S, Split, Ctrl+S…aaaaaaaaand crash.’ *sigh* It was beyond frustrating. Still, it deleted my credits with no explanation, and I had to redo things several times.
My husband never ceases to be amazed at the kind of craziness that happens with electronics when I come near. But I knew going into this class that this was going to happen, and did it anyway. So it’s my own fault. I made it through, eventually.
And I think it turned out half decent, at least. Not bad for a first go at this, anyway.
Description: For this assignment I was asked to make a 90 second video about why my residence hall is the best place to live on campus.
Inspiration: After the description of this assignment I immediately thought about when I was a incoming freshman here at the University and I was trying to decide where to live. I wish there had been some sort of guide out there to help me decide on which dorm to live in! I didn’t know anything about the campus or the different themed living communities that they had on campus. This would have helped me so much and I think a lot of other students as well.
Process: For this assignment I recorded myself talking about my Iphone about the reasons to live in Eagle Landing. After recording myself I then uploaded my video on Youtube. After uploading it I downloaded it to my computer using WinX Youtube Downloader. I then opened the video into Windows Movie Maker, added some special effects, and title slide and credit slide. I used the Trim tool to do some editing and I added three visual effects to the movie (spin, wrap, and 3D ripple) to give it more substance. And Viola!
Example: There was only one previous example of this assignment done. Here is the link to that example:
I felt that overall this example was not very effective at getting the story across. It honestly just reminded me of someone just documenting their day to day life. The video also didn’t really go by the directions of the assignment. First, the video was only supposed to be 90 seconds long and the girl lived off campus with her family (so it kind of really went against the purpose of the assignment). However, even ignoring all this she never really gives me any reason to want to come live at her house. She basically is just giving me a tour of her house.
). I had already shorted the YouTube clip (which I downloaded using the