Vacation in Germany and Paris 2013

Here is a photo montage of my vacation to Germany and France. The background music is my favorite classical piece Canon in D Major by Pachelbel.

Eastern Caribbean Vacation focused on the Destinations

This video consist of photographs and video from last Christmas Vacation2013  my family took. This to date is my favorite vacation cruising to the Eastern Caribbean from Baltimore, Maryland with four destinations which are all shown in the video.

This video was made and edited in Windows Movie Maker a program that came with windows on my computer. I was intimidated before I started this and never had edited a video before. I use YouTube which has plenty tutorials on how to accomplish this.

Once Movie Maker is open it is just a matter getting started to drag and drop pictures or video on the time line. The picture below shows what it look like after I put in pictures/videos and inserting sound effects from my hard drive.

You can drag and drop from your files.
You can drag and drop from your files.

The issue came when it was time to cut videos and take out the parts I did not want. I use this YouTube video. This took all the worries out of how to edit videos. The other video I watched that helped me edit was How to Edit Like a Pro. With these two videos you should be able to do at least what I did in this video.

The music aid in telling my story was some of the most difficult and time consuming processes of this assignment. I was trying to convey a story primarily with visual and music. You have to play with the transitions and pans to necessarily get what you want to say or achieve a look you are looking for. I noticed after I published this video some things I would have changed. A couple of pans were not good for the picture. A good idea is to watch it on full screen before publishing your video.

I experimented with adding text to help convey my story or point out parts of the video I wanted the viewer to pay attention too. The next picture shows me adding text to a part my son said that was hard to hear (and funny). You would move the bar where you want it and go to home tab and press caption. If you mess up you can click on the text under picture/video and select edit text under text tool tab.

Add text to make a point
Add text to make a point

The first time this is time consuming but the more you tinker with it the easier it becomes.  I have over 20 hours in making this video and that do not count the times laying in bed wondering how the heck I was going to pull this off.

The beginning was done with the title tab under the home tab. The same was done with the credit screen. When I did “The End” over video I used caption button with a roll up pan placed under where I wanted it to appear in the video. I like this feature, because it broke up just having a credit screen, so I saved the credit screen just to put my music credits.

This is really fun and a good way to archive your photographs and videos and share them with family and friends. Have fun with it you really cannot mess it up, remember you can always delete something you do not like and replace it with something else.

I have the fortune of have being a DJ before, therefore I have more music than I know what to do with, so I did not have to go looking for music or sound effects. There are some free sources for music and sound effects on line or if you have I-tunes you can draw from those files.

Below is my music credits to the video:

Music In Order:
Intro                                                                                                   Movie Fanfare 2
All I want for Christmas                                                         Michelle Gordon
Small Axe Remix                                                                      Guy in Tortola (Live)
Chronic Christmas                                                                    Kronic Heights
Noel                                                                                                     (Store Radio)
A Felicidad               Richard Clayderman [Antonio Carlos Jobim (Composer)]
Sound Effect                                                                               You Suck and Ooh
(Christmas Makes Me) So Happy                                   Colby Odonis
Don’t Rock The Boat                                                               Bob Marley
El Gran                                                  Combo De Puerto Rico Ahi (50 Anos)
Haitian By Association (Clean)                                         Wyclef Jean
Live Performance (on peer)                                           Labadee Performers
Live Melody (Bob’s Is This Love)                                 Tina (my wife) and I
Bob Marley                                                                              Is This Love

 

 

Boa Vinda A Brasil!

It’s Vacation Time

What was your favorite vacation? Don’t you wish you could relive it over and over? How about you share your favorite vacation with us through pictures,video and music. Create a video, sharing with us where you went!

This was a pretty straightforward assignment! I created this video using the Slideshow option in iPhoto! I simply indicated which photos I wanted in the slide show and moved them into the correct order. I was able to use a “Scrapbook” theme and insert text using iPhoto. I uploaded the music from my iTunes library!

See more awesome travel videos here!

Assignment Value: 2 Stars

Total Value for Week 4: 10 Stars

My masterpieces

In addition to two tutorials, we had to create two brand new assignments to share with DS106.

The first assignment I created is called “Dear sixteen year old, me“! I feel very official having a DS106 assignment out there with my name on it! Basically all you do is write a letter to your 16 year old self and record it. I labeled this as a Video assignment, but I can see it working as an audio assignment as well, especially if you were to create a video with pictures of your high school days and have the recording in the background.

My inspiration came from this video, I know its about skin cancer, but I liked the general premise behind the video and thought it would be fun to write a letter to my own 16 year old self. All I did was record the video in iMovie, edit a little and add a title and credit screen. I gave this 2 stars because it is a relatively easy assignment, but due to the potential video editing and how fancy you get with filming it, I thought 2 stars was appropriate.

Here is my video:

The second assignment I created was another video assignment, entitled “It’s Vacation Time“! I LOVE going on vacation and traveling new places. So I thought it would be fun to have a video assignment to share pictures and memories from our vacations. I gave the assignment 2 stars. I created my example in iMovie, it’s about my trip on a Mediterranean  cruise. I even made a tutorial on how to do it.

It’s Vacation Time

What was your favorite vacation? Don’t you wish you could relive it over and over? How about you share your favorite vaction with us through pictures,video and music. Create a video, sharing with us where you went!