Many times the viewers of the movie don’t know or understand the details that go into making a movie. However, you can easily find these interesting facts through wikipedia or imdb. While I was further researching the movie I cam across many details about the making of this movie. It is actually a biography based on the life of Chris Gardner and his struggle through being homeless. In the movie title, happyness is actually purposely spelled wrong due to a sign that Chris Gardner saw when he was homeless outside of a daycare center his son attends. Many of the details of Gardner’s life that took place in the movie over a span of years were compressed down to fit into the 117 minutes allowed. Gardner also thought that Will Smith was mis-cast to play him, but fortunately was set straight by his daughter. Gardner also makes a cameo appearance in the film and is acknowledged by Will Smith who plays him.
Since this film is about someone’s personal life I was categorize this film to be a biography. According the the film’s imdb site the genre is a Biography or Drama.
I took two other scenes from the movie that had details that I described in my review of movie details. In the first scene I found that the character that has the most power was always on the right side. I found this to be true in several other clips that I watched from the movie, however this one was most prominent. The second scene was one where I described a camera technique that sort of went back and forth through conversation.
To create this montage of the two scenes, I downloaded the videos using keepvid. It was very simple and this tutorial explains how to do it but does require Java. I then used MPEG streamclip to cut and combine the videos.
Not gonna lie – I’m pretty good with iMovie. In fact, I teach people how to use it professionally. (I’m an instructional technologist.) So instead of planning out my video projects this week, and then executing them next week, I’m just going to stagger the projects. And maybe do a couple extras just for fun, we’ll see.
My first project is inspired by the recent acquisition of the Star Wars franchise by Disney. As soon as I saw the Disneyland commercial starring Darth Vader (and a few anonymous storm troopers, as all storm troopers are) I knew I wanted to use it for one of my video projects. And given the brilliance that is Silent Star Wars, I felt inspired to make my own attempt at a Star Wars silent film. A Disney one, that is.
To create this, I followed my usual process of pulling the video from YouTube via PwnYoutTube. I then imported the video into iMovie (File -> Import -> Movie) and copied the entire thing into a new Project. I removed the beginning and end stills and added my own. The introduction uses the “Far Far Away” title format, and the end uses a basic “Centered” title. I then removed the audio from the main portion of the commercial:
Hover over the footage until the blue Options gear icon appears.
Click on the gear.
Select Audio Adjustments.
Bring the Volume down to 0%.
I liked the sound of Darth Vader breathing from the beginning of the original commercial, so I selected that portion of the video in the Event Library and dragged it onto my opening title slide (be sure that the playhead cursor is at the point where you want the audio to begin, in this case the very beginning of the footage). This brought up the overlay menu and I selected Audio Only. The audio clip wasn’t long enough, so I had to duplicate it to cover all of the opening.
For the main portion of the video, however, I wanted to use a traditional silent film score. Some Google digging brought me to Incompetech’s listing of freely available stereotypical silent film scores (if you are looking for a particular film’s score, you’d probably have better luck with the Internet Archive or another repository of copyright-free resources). The song “Merry Go – Distressed” had the playful tone I wanted (plus, Vader actually rides on a Merry-Go-Round, so it seemed like a felicitous song to use). I dragged it into iMove (again matching the playhead). The song is longer than the footage, so I had to add a fade-out. To do this:
Click on the green Options gear icon on the audio track.
Select Audio Adjustments.
For Fade-Out select Manual.
I set it to a 1.9s fade. I find that slower fades are less jarring.
The most challenging part of this was generating the film grain – iMovie has some default options available, but none of them had the look I wanted. I went with the Aged Film effect (Options gear -> Clip Adjustments -> Video Effects), and then started to dig for other options.
I really liked what Ben Rimes (@techsavvyed) achieved with his Silent Era Back to the Future (and discovered that apparently we had used the same score source), so I looked into the Particle Illusion graphics he used. I found working with the individual images to be cumbersome, so I converted them into a separate movie, which you can view or Pwn on YouTube. I then imported the movie into my Events Library and dragged it onto the footage to create an overlay. From the overlay menu I selected Cutaway (some tutorials will tell you to use Picture in Picture, but this doesn’t allow you to change the opacity). I then went to the Options menu for the grain overlay and under Clip Adjustments set the Opacity to 21% (the exact percentage will vary depending on the main footage you are working with, but I’ve found that somewhere in the 20-30 range allows you to see the grain without making the footage difficult to see).
Finally, inspired by the gorgeous title cards Ben had used from CopyCatFilms, I redid the end still of the twitter hashtag #starwarsdisney. And thus was born the Silent Era version of Darth Vaders first trip to Disneyland.
The opening credits give the first impression of what is to come. For the opening credits redux, I have a chance to recreate this in my own way. The most difficult part of the Pre-productions for this assignment was coming up with a good show/movie. I thought about 101 Dalmations, Cinderella (I like Disney classics), or even a James Bond. But I didn’t think I could get a good outcome. I finally decided on my all time favorite show Planet Earth. This show is so awe-inspiring and shows how unique nature really is. I am a nerd and have every episode made along with Disney Earth, Oceans, and Frozen Planet. It’s safe to say I may be a bit obsessed.
I first googled the original opening credits (even though I know it by heart) and bookmarked it for later reference. I then thought about what I wanted to do. The original idea is a compilation of the intense parts of the show with dramatic music in the background. I want to do the opposite. I love this show, even though it does show some of the darkest parts of nature, it still has happy moments. I want to create it more of an up-beat happy-go-lucky type of opening credits. I found a few compilations of scenes off youtube and plan to cut these down and put them together. I’m not sure of the music but have been pondering “Waiting on the World to Change” by John Mayer. I think it would be a good fit, I just want to see if the scenes will fit.
There were no tutorials on how to do this assignment, but it should be simple with a few cuts here and some rearranging and adding some music! Of course, I’m sure it sounds a lot simpler than it is!
For next week’s assignments I decided to do Return to the Silent Era. I have always thought silent movies were really cool and thought it would be really cool to turn a modern day movie into one. I started trying to think of movies that would work really well with this idea. I came up with Finding Neemo. I’m actually not sure how this film is going to convert into a Silent film, but I am willing to try it out.
To prepare for this assignment, I have downloaded a trailer for the movie using keepvid. I also looked through some of the previous assignments to see what others had done and if there were any tutorials on how to do this assignment. Unfortunately, none of them were using Windows movie maker. But I did get a few ideas of what I want to do.
First, I want to cut out the words already in the trailer. I have a few ideas of words I want to put in to tell the story, but haven’t finalized it yet. Most silent films are in black and white, but I also want to add the “old timey” effect to it. I went and looked at the effects Windows Movie Maker has to offer and found a film age old, older, and oldest. I am going to choose one of those when I upload my clip. Lastly, I am going to cut out all of the sound (it is a silent film) and add a sort of ragtime piano type music. Hopefully, with the combination of all of these tools and effects I can create a modern silent film!
This was a very interesting way to approach critiquing techniques of visual and audio and how they come together in a movie. Cutting off the senses really makes one focus on the specific aspects that contribute to one technique rather that putting everything together at once. I chose a clip from the Pursuit of Happyness to critique. I found it had many different effects that together added to the emotion of the scene.
Visual Notes:
Begins with a timing scene (through night to the morning)
Cuts to frantic running- camera moves around a lot, cuts to different views of character
When arrives at destination camera evens out and slows cuts down, but still gives different views of character
When character starts walking, follows him from behind at first, then cuts to following him in front, occasionally giving a few POV scenes
Enters meeting room- starts off following main character around the room but then changes
Conversation cutting- scenes cut back and forth to the person talking in conversation
Audio Notes:
Begins with serious slow music, but starts to pick up the speed a bit
Can hear sound effects (honking, cars moving, door slamming, elevator ding, people talking) in the background of music
Eventually music stops and you just hear people talking and things moving around (papers, carts, etc…)
Then music fades in again (serious, but upbeat and a bit frantic) and you hear sound effects (people talking, phones ringing)
Music fades out
Conversation between characters begin- not many sound effects
Together Notes:
Music only plays when main character is on the move (running to appointment, walking to meeting room)
After I took all of these notes, I started trying to connect them with the characteristics I read about from Robert Ebert. The first connection I came across was the idea of intrinsic weighing. He defines this by “certain areas of the available visual space have tendencies to stir emotional or aesthetic reactions”. As I thought about this, it made sense to me. The positioning of the person does seem to have an effect of hierarchy or emotional that is un-noticed to the viewer until specifically pointed out. One of these that Ebert pointed out was that a centered person is objectified. He said it was somewhat like a mug shot. I noticed that in the meeting room, Will Smith (the main character) is mostly centered. He also sits on the other side of the table from his interviewers in the only middle chair. This makes sense in the fact that he is in an interview and is the subject of the scene. I also noticed that during the interview, the main (I’m assuming CEO) is on the right. When the scene cuts to the other two main people (besides Will Smith) that the older, hierarchical person is on the right. According to Ebert, in scenes like this the person on the right is more dominant and positive than the one on the left. This is true for this scene.
I next moved on the actual camera cuts. I mostly used the video of Top Cinematic Techniques as a reference for this part. I went back and watched the clip one more time, then watched the technique video and tried to connect any camera techniques together. The first one I came across was the tracking shot. This was used in the Pursuit of Happiness clip when Will Smith starts walking through the office space to the meeting room. The camera sort of follows him through some of the office. During this part, it also cuts to some POV shots where we see everything how Will Smith would be seeing it. The next camera technique that I connected to this scene was a steady cam. In the first part of the scene, the camera was frantic and moving a lot. It had many cuts and was a bit crazy. However, when Will Smith started slowing and calming down, the camera reacted in the same way. It still cut, but it wasn’t as much or as quickly. There was a camera technique that I couldn’t find any reference on, but still really stood out to me was in the conference room. The camera would cut back and forth to whomever was speaking at the time. It was sort of a conversation cut. I’m not positive if this is an actual technique, but it did stand out to me.
It is amazing how much you actually notice something when it is pointed out to you. I have never noticed how camera angles or positioning of people affect emotions and visuals so much. However, now that it has been pointed out I know that they discretely do. Cutting off senses helps to distinguish these effects even more. It forces you to really focus on that specific aspect with nothing else interfering.
In this montage of videos, the one I watched is simply called the pursuit of happyness. If you click on playlist at the bottom of the video screen you can scroll through the videos and find this one!
Here is my next Visual Assignment called Find Yourself!
Assignment: For this assignment we had to find our name in the environment around us. We could either use something that had our first name, parts of our first name, or even the individual letters that make up our name in the environment around us.
Process: I decided to use a picture I took when I went to Paris. I took this photo when my tour group was walking through a mall and my teacher recommended that I should snap a picture of it. I love all the different reflections in this the photo and the constrat of colors!
“Grab a marker and today’s morning edition and start blacking out sections to create a new story. It could be a poem, a picture, or a novella, all drawn from the words of the latest news.”
Fredericksburg chickens unanimously passed two ordinances that allow beehives to petition in support of bees in residential neighborhoods.
This is just a little nonsensical story. The original text stuck out to me because the title was about chickens, a front page story about chickens? Did I move to the midwest over night? At first this story was about Fredericksburg residents voting that chicken copes and beehive can be allowed in residential neighborhoods as long as they are properly restrained an protected, but I decided to focus it more on the chickens running a town of bees. I think it turned out pretty well.
I made this story by finding an already silly story in the Star Weekly and blacking out words to make it different.
(I hope you get the reference above. If not, google it, and then watch the movie if you haven’t seen it. It’s got some funny one-liners.)
I chose Windex for this assignment because I thought it would look cool to manipulate the color of it. I was right. It looks like some kind of neon, toxic waste. Like if you were to fall into a puddle of this shit, you’d either die or come out a super hero–hopefully the latter. I manipulated (or inverted) the colors by using the free app, Photoshop Express, on my iPhone. Super easy, and fun to use. Along with manipulating the colors, I changed the tint & temperature of the picture a bit (warming it up, and tinting it with a bit of red to bring out the beautiful blue of the windex). The picture above is the result.
This weekend I visited the Middlesex Fells Reservation, which has a number of great hiking trails. We wandered onto the Rock Circuit Trail which has many fantastic rocks to climb sans climbing gear and view the park (or at least the tree-line, none of them were actually high enough to see the entire park). When I read the description of the Slide Guy! visual assignment, I thought immediately of those rocks. Wouldn’t he look great sliding down one of them? Sadly, in going through my pictures, I only had one that showed a slide-appropriate profile of a rock formation, and it had my friend in it:
To fix this I used the clone stamp tool in Photoshop to replace my friend with trees and sky, and then dragged slide guy into the image and increased his size to make sure he was having extra fun:
But the composition felt off. Slide guy was too small, there was too much sky, the image just didn’t quite work. So I cropped it. And I’m pretty happy with the result. Slide guy will never fit perfectly into any image (unless it’s an actual slide), but he always looks like he’s having fun. Even if he’s sliding down a pile of rocks.
Ta-Da!! My goodness what an adventure creating my first GIF! I chose to use a clip from Sweet Home Alabama, this movie is one of my all-time favorites. In this scene young Jake is protecting Melanie from touching a hot spot that was just struck by lightning
At first, the thought of creating a GIF was very stressful, I researched and downloaded many different types of software but nothing was giving me a good result. After trying for a couple of hours to figure it out I finally decided to try the directions on this page. I found them to be VERY helpful. Step by step everything worked and my GIF turned out exactly how I wanted (:
