This is Meg Roll’s Five Seconds of Fame. Here she demonstrates her “Man Gettin’” Face (aka, the expression she uses to pick up dudes–genius, if you ask me. She took this video, and emailed it to me. I then edited it, and uploaded it to YouTube. Enjoy.
For this assignment, I had a few of my friends get together and have our very own That 70′s Show circle. I had them sit around, cross-legged style, and we passed around an iPhone that was recording. Whoever the camera was passed to, they recorded the person directly across from them, and the person being filmed said dumb shit–as my friends actually do. After that, I uploaded it, and edited it, and voila! I chose to do this assignment, because I was hanging out the other night, observing my friends talking to each other, and they all have their weird little idiosyncrasies that make them who they are, and also make the dynamics of the group work. It’s an entertaining time to say the least.
Lip Sync to your Favorite Song
This one was painful for me to do. I recorded myself lip syncing to P!ink’s “Who Knew”. I was super uncomfortable in front of the camera but I tried to put some pep in my performance. I chose this song because it has some sass to it and I love belting it out when it comes on. This one was pretty simple, I just recorded myself on my laptop, which explains the crappy quality, and then edited it in movie maker.
2 stars.
A 2-star assignment: Tell a short story using flashcard and record yourself. It can be something funny, sad, or just even express how your day was.
Thanksgiving is right around the corner and I wanted to do a short tribute of thankfulness in video form. What better way to tell my story? I do believe that gratitude is the overflow of a joyful heart. I’m a lover of the exchange of words on paper.
This was a semi-easy assignment (thus the two stars) and I wanted it simple because the words were going to be the most important. The video was recorded and uploaded from my phone. The music that is playing is a lyric-less Josh Groban track that I adore. It’s a beautiful and season-appropriate melody. I also thought narration would be inappropriate because the flashcards were going to be used.
There is something nice about a hand-written aspect to a video even if the handwriting is not the prettiest. Handwriting is raw and something that I find is most in line with whatever emotion I am feeling. The papers are also reflective on the way I feel. Granted, these are the papers that I found to be the most handy and available, but color impacts how you perceive things and I wanted these to mirror how I saw the person or what I knew the person’s tastes were. I know that I am spewing a lot of reasons and not much story here, but I think that each person is their own story and between the two of us we create another paragraph together in the book of life.
Do the Hitch Cut – ds106 Video Assignment worth 4 stars
Alfred Hitchcock, the legendary master of suspense, shares a brief 90-second lesson on how a simple change in a three-shot edit can result in evoking a completely different response from the viewing audience. Can you do the Hitch Cut? Make two versions of a short three-shot video — in each instance maintaining the first and third shots, but changing out the second shot in each. Can you get a completely different result from your viewer?
Virtual Bonus Points for attempting this assignment with something different from just the changing face of a character as in Hitch’s example.
The original clip, which scene 1, scene 3, and the first version of scene 2 came from, were cut from this YouTube clip, though not necessarily in the order that they were presented.
I got the second version of scene 2 from a pretty nifty little YouTube song/video, which I of course just muted and snipped in Streamclip to get the bits of Fezzik awesomeness that I needed.
This assignment was more of a hassle than I expected it to be. I had to open the original clip into Streamclip separately each time I wanted to trim out a scene to use. I couldn’t get it to let me just take out certain parts of the clip in the middle and leave others there – neither Trim, Cut, or Delete would work. So I found and saved each of the scenes – Scene 1, Scene 3, and Scene 2a and Scene 2B. Then, I had to open the first three scenes for the Hitch Cut with the first version of the second scene into Streamclip. Once that was exported as a single video (and silenced), I had to do this again. Open Files in Streamclip, click on Ctrl + Scene 3, then Scene 2B, then Scene 1. I stripped this of audio also, then exported it as well. Finally, I opened the first and second 3-scene clips together into Streamclip, exported it, and then uploaded it to YouTube.
I love the point that my version of this assignment makes. Did they really have to go all Dread-Pirate-Roberts on the guards? Or was Fezzik scary, large, and strong enough to handle it all on his own? I, for one, am not too convinced that this amiable killer would have found himself wanting at the job, Holocaust cloak and fire or not. 
Video Assignment Count: 16
BOOOOYAA BABY SIX-MOTHA FLIPPIN-TEEN!
Ahem sorry. So for my final star I decided to do probably the weirdest and easiest assignment I could find. I ended on Play it Backward, Jack. So simple, so freaking weird looking when I did it:
I knew it would come out looking unusual, but damn. And the fact that it just a slice of cheese. The reverse chewing sounds are what get me.
AnyhoooooOOOoo. So I chose this assignment mostly because I only needed 1 more star and I had already kind of burnt myself out with editing this week. Between this, and my work I didn’t really want to see Final Cut Pro again. So I simple recorded this with my built in camera, and for the last time went into Final Cut, and used the clip modification tool to reverse the footage. When I watched it the first time I seemed slower kind of in reverse, so I speed it up a little.
At this point, honestly, I’m tired and it looks like some other ds106ers did eating. Quite frankly I didn’t look at theirs before I shot mine so I didn’t know if I was being unique or not. I just wanted to see myself eat some damn cheese backwards. It was simple and delicious.
And now to close out this post here is a picture of a banana eating a banana:
I was not very happy with the end result of this one. The goal was to recreate a scene from a horror film, so I immediately thought of “The Shining” and hereeee’s johnny and all that jazz. Well I had originally intended on having some friends help me with this, so that we could do it with real people, but apparently my friends don’t like me enough and wouldn’t do it. I tried thinking of other ways to do it from me doing all the parts myself (I tried it, it was terrible), to making like a picture slideshow, but I didn’t like how any of them turned out. Luckily I acquired some legos and I figured that they would make a good idea, as kind of puppets I guess you could say. I filmed it probably 20 times because of a combination of me messing it up and my computer not cooperating. I guess it’s kind of clever to not actually use real people, but I still think it would have turned out better had I done that instead. Just to make it clear, the guy with the axe, hacking away at the wall is Jack, and the girl with the knife jumping around for dear life because she is terrified is Wendy.
Watching Movies With the Stereo On – ds106 Video Assignment worth 3 stars
Like when you have a movie playing on TV without the sound and you’ve got the stereo on at the same time. Take a clip from a movie, remove the audio, and add audio from a song or radio show that, somehow, kind of fits. See my two examples.
The original video:
The original audio – a clip I own from Lead Me – Sanctus Real.
This assignment turned out way better than I had actually hoped. The timing worked out great.
I decided to stick with my Princess Bride theme that has been prevalent this week. I pondered on my own personal music collection, while browsing through some videos from YouTube. While looking at some fire swamp clips, the song above came to mind, and it crossed my mind that it would be perfect.
I sang the song quietly to myself while watching the part of the clip I wanted, and it worked out so perfectly that the ROUS attacks right when the chorus sings about being willing to fight. Awesomeness.
I shortened the audio clip to just the chorus using Audacity, and edited the video clip in MPEG Streamclip. There, I stripped the original audio track, and trimmed it down to have it start where I wanted it to (just as they have stood back up and he begins to lead her onward again after falling in the sand pit).
I tried to use YouTube’s Video Editor to put them together, but it wouldn’t allow me to add my music clip either in Firefox or Chrome. I finally went to Windows Live Movie Maker, and had an easier time there. The beginning timing was already perfect, so I just had to trim it to 42 seconds to get it to end where I wanted it to, and publish.
