For this assignment we had to create a video of ourselves having a conversation with ourselves. I decided to put a little twist on this assignment by singing a song with myself instead. I set up my laptop in my sun room and took two recordings of myself singing. First was me playing and singing with my uke and the second was me singing harmony to the previous recording. I then uploaded the videos into Adobe Premiere and cropped them together so it looked like it was taken and recorded in one shot.
This took me a lot longer than I thought it was going to but I think it turned out pretty well! I hope you enjoy my short video of “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz!
Also please excuse the messy hair and PJs, quarantine means I get to stay in my PJs all day
(PS This was a 5 star assignment, 5 more stars to go for the week!)
The first required assignment I did is called Have a Conversation with Yourself worth five stars! The assignment required you to create a video of you talking to yourself with yourself. I found this assignment to be very difficult because I had no idea how to put my two different films together. I did two takes of the assignment because the first one was to shaky  and the second one was a little better. I did learn through this assignment though how to use a great video editing program called film cut pro.Film cut pro allows you to use video editing skills on the next level.
This is my dramatic Conversation with myself! It’s only 30 seconds long, but boy oh boy does it tug at the heartstrings. I was inspired to make this video because I was wearing my work uniform at the time (I work at a State Park) and I decided one of the characters to be an authority figure. I know it’s more of a short skit than a conversation but I think it turned out surprisingly well. The original assignment can be found here: Conversation With Myself Assignment. This assignment was required and was worth 5 stars.
THIS ASSIGNMENT TOOK FOREVER. Planning out the script and then getting the timing right took several tries and that probably took me a good 30 minutes or more. The hardest part though was finding a video editing software that would allow me merge the videos together. I couldn’t find one so I eventually emailed my clips to myself and then using my girlfriends Macbook, used Imovie and it took me about 2 minutes to put the videos together and get it uploaded to youtube. Why isn’t there a simpler/free way to merge clips on PC??
Have a conversation with yourself! Film yourself talking, then change clothes, hair styles, etc and then film the other half of the convo. Edit this in any movie editor program (I used Pinnacle movie maker) To overlap the two scenes so that you are talking to yourself! Play around, to figure out the most efficient way! Also, timing is everything in this! Make sure when talking to leave breaks for your other self to respond!
For this assignment I couldn’t use Windows Movie Maker. I had to find a different video editing software that would work with Windows 10 since Movie Maker has almost no effects. Since this requires an effect that overlap’s the two scenes to make it look like I’m talking to myself, I had to find a software with more effects. So after searching Google for some software, I eventually stumbled upon the VideoPad video editing software. I chose this to use for this assignment since in the description of the program, it had all the effects I need, and seemed trustworthy.
After finding a reliable video editing software, I created my script. I decided to go with the idea of two roommates having a disagreement because one wants to do homework, while the other is being distracting and won’t come to terms with the other person.
Next came the filming which was my absolute least favorite part. To shoot the video, I just used my laptop’s built in webcam. Then I imported the videos into VideoPad and got to work.
I spent a couple hours trying to figure out how to make the clips overlap, but I just couldn’t do it. I only managed to get both the audio’s playing.
Here’s my assignment for “Have a Conversation With Yourself”. I wasn’t really excited about doing this because I am a very shy person and hate recording myself! I found it very awkward and weird having a conversation with myself I have no idea how Eddie Murphy or other actor could do this! I couldn’t think of a topic but then I thought, HEY! why not just make the topic about doing my ds106 videos? So that’s what I did, took me many many takes to do it, battery on my camera almost died it took so long. I finally got all the clips I needed and imported them to my computer simply via USB. Copied all of them into my Windows Movie Maker and rearranged them to how I needed and uploaded it to YouTube. I have to say after I recorded all my clips everything else was pretty simple.
I have to say it was super weird watching myself….talk.. to myself? lol
I probably should’ve listened to myself. I stayed up all night watching stuff on Netflix and ended up oversleeping, so I missed out on some stuff I wanted to do. Oh well, now I know. For those that are reading this, I hope that you can learn my mistake.
For this assignment, I decided to be stubborn with myself. I figured the video would be a bit humorous for the viewer to see me arguing with myself, so I decided to go with that rather than anything else. I ended  up using the camera on my phone to record each shot because I didn’t have actually have a working camera with me even though I thought I did. Anyway, it didn’t take long for me to record everything. I just pressed the record button on my phone and began saying my lines with long pauses between each of them. I repeated the same method for the other shot as well and everything turn out better than expected.
I inserted both clips into Sony Vegas and used the Split Tool to cut them up and rearrange them in the correct order. After adding the Credits and Title card, I exported the video as a 720p Portrait video and then uploaded it to YouTube.
I hope you all enjoyed this wacky video from me! I haven’t done anything like this before, but I might do it again just for fun.
Have a conversation with yourself! Film yourself talking, then change clothes, hair styles, etc and then film the other half of the convo. Edit this in any movie editor program (I used Pinnacle movie maker) To overlap the two scenes so that you are talking to yourself! Play around, to figure out the most efficient way! Also, timing is everything in this! Make sure when talking to leave breaks for your other self to respond!Â
The Work Itself
The Story Behind the Story
I wasn’t sure what kind of conversation I wanted to have with myself for this assignment. I finally decided after awhile that it would be me studying since that’s about the only thing I ever have time to do anyway. I honestly do not know how people have time to do anything else other than studying while in college! I picked my bed and my desk to have the conversation because that is usually where you’ll find me while studying; either my bed or my desk studying the night away.
Narrating the Process
I was pretty unsure on how to start this assignment. There are very directions other than what kind of movie editor to use. I watched the only tutorial someone has posted for this assignment and saw that it used iMovie. I have a PC so iMovie wasn’t really a viable option for me. I researched to see if Windows Movie Maker had the capabilities and unfortunately it did not. Then I tried to find online movie like Magisto, but unfortunately that one did not have the capabilities either. I wasn’t really interested in downloading another program because my computer has been running slow enough as it is and bogging it down with another program was not going to help. I finally asked a friend if I could use their Mac for an hour or two and they graciously agreed.
After sorting out how I was going to accomplish this assignment, I set up a script and filmed the two separate scenes with my Nikon L120. I made sure not to move the camera and that everything remained the same between the two shots. I also followed the advice about leaving long pauses between each sentence in order to make the conversation seem like it’s flowing correctly.
Next I went to my friends house to edit the videos on her Mac in iMovie. I attempted to follow the directions from the tutorial, however, it did not exactly work for some reason. One video would always cover up the other. So then I set off to find another tutorial. Out of the four tutorials I looked at, only one actually worked out for me. A nine year old made this tutorial. None of the adults were able to fully explain how to achieve this effect but a nine year old child did. How crazy is that? Anyway, following his directions I made sure my advanced tools were on in Preferences. Then I added the first clip into the editing box and then I placed the second one on top of it. Once I did that, a pop menu appears and I picked the “Side by Side” option along with the “Blue Screen” option. For some reason the blue screen option worked while the “Green Screen” option didn’t from the ds106 tutorial.
Once I finished editing the video on the Mac, I saved it as .mov file and sent it to myself so I could finish the rest in Movie Maker as well as fix the low audio sound in Audacity. This is where something went wrong. I cannot explain but everything worked fine in iMovie but once it was saved, everything jumbled together. I should have checked to see if it still worked after I saved it but I have never had a problem like this before. Since I was already back at my own home, I decided to try and fix problem myself but to no avail. I used effects in Audacity like Effect –> Noise Reduction and Vocal Remover. Nothing worked. It would always cut out of all of the audio instead of separating the two voices. Next I tried to edit the video in Movie Maker to try and separate the parts that were speaking over each other. However, given Movie Maker’s fairly basic applications and the fact that the videos were together as one, there was nothing I could do.
I decided to take the original recordings’s audio and edit that so I least it made half sense when the whole thing was put together. You can see the two recordings within Audacity below.Â
After the audio was cut and pasted together. I uploading the .mov recording and the audio file into Windows Movie Maker. I was able to have the first part of the video and the audio line up perfectly, but after that the video is all jumbled and the audio flows nicely.
Lastly, I added the title and the credits along with some music from Free Music Archive.
The biggest test of my editing skills to date has come and gone, as today, I premiered my “Five-Word Book Club” segment as part of DS106. Inspired by the “Five-Second Movies” of Doug Walker and, by extension, yours truly, my final video assignment for this grading period is an abridged parody of Internet review shows in general, as I summarize three classic books or plays – all in the public domain, as of press time – for the audience’s viewing pleasure. As for the reason why I started this post by describing this video, and not the challenge it was based on, that can be summed up with what the challenge itself, worth five stars toward our final score for these two weeks, was. As pointed out in the assignment bank, the challenge was doing the following:
Have a conversation with yourself! Film yourself talking, then change clothes, hair styles, etc., and then film the other half of the convo. Edit this in any movie editor program (I used Pinnacle movie maker) To overlap the two scenes so that you are talking to yourself! Play around, to figure out the most efficient way! Also, timing is everything in this! Make sure when talking to leave breaks for your other self to respond!
The shots were done in one take on my iPhone, with the only real costume change being my choice of shirts. The script focused on a one-minute episode of the show, in which I “reviewed” Robert W. Chambers’ horror anthology, The King in Yellow; Romeo and Juliet, the timeless tragedy from William Shakespeare’s First Folio; and George Barr McCutcheon’s comedy of capitalism, and the subsequent errors thereof, Brewster’s Millions.
Pre-production started – by which I mean, the script was typed – a day in advance of filming, and the editing process was quick and painless, or as much as you could imagine it to be. Since Windows Live Movie Maker didn’t include a function where you can seamlessly splice two videos together, I settled for the next best thing, and downloaded VideoPad by NCH Software for my editing purposes.
Once I had uploaded the footage onto my computer, I watched through the available footage on VideoPad, looking out for any moments of silence I could cut out, so that the story was told in a much more effective manner. Alternating between the two videotaped versions of me, I completed the set hours ahead of schedule, making sure to save everything as its own MP4 file when I closed up shop.
From there, I added in the usual set of opening and closing credits on Movie Maker, complete with the “Sabre Dance” from Gayane playing in the background. After that, I saved everything in full, and uploaded the final product onto my YouTube account, to wrap everything up for these two weeks.
This is the required assignment for weeks 11 & 12 of DS106. I needed to have a conversation with myself. This is a link to the assignment page.
First, the video.
The reason I chose to do bad jokes is because they’re something that my family loves. I have three siblings and every time we get together, we tell the same terrible jokes. The NASA joke is actually a newer one that I saw online, but the bunny rabbit joke is a pretty good representation of the quality of the jokes we tell. What’s that? You want to know some more of them? Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. My dad’s favorite joke is this.
Q: How do you smoke a swordfish?
A: Put the tail in your mouth and light the other end.
My sister told him that joke when she was eight. He’s been telling it for the last 15 years. And he sometimes doesn’t even remember the answer to it. It’s a terribly awful joke. Another one? Okay.
Q: Where does Hitler keep his armies?
A: In his sleevies!!
Get it???!!!! Arm-ies? Sleeve-ies? It’s awful. And we love it. And now for one of my all-time favorites. I found this one on a site filled with terrible kid jokes.
There are three men on a plane. The first man bites into an apple, but he doesn’t like it, so he throws it out the window. The second man bites into a rock.
No, I didn’t forget to tell the end of the joke. That’s it. I love telling it, deadpanning after the last line, and watching peoples’ reactions. The point is, bad jokes are a big part of my personality. I love bad jokes and terrible puns. So if I could actually have a conversation with myself, chances are it would be an exchange of terrible jokes.
Now, the process. I don’t have a webcam, so I propped my iPhone up and tried to keep it in the same place the best I could. I think I did a decent job with that. I wrote down what I wanted each me to say and then practiced a couple times before filming it. I thought about using headphones to record the whole conversation and then incorporating them into the video somehow so I would have cues, but I decided to just try to time it out the best I could. I’ve seen the kind of videos this assignment asks for. Eddie Murphy has made several films using this technique (I never saw Norbert, but I heard that was the right decision). However, when I went to edit the video in Windows Movie Maker, I couldn’t find a way to overlap them. I thought, “I must just be missing it, there has to be a way. This is a common enough technique, right?” WRONG! I built my computer a year ago and the OS shipped with Windows Movie Maker 12. After some online searching, I found out that Windows Movie Maker 12 doesn’t support combining video in the way this assignment required. Supposedly Windows Movie Maker 15 does. But every download was shifty and I am really skeptical of untrustworthy downloads. My work also requires that I keep my home computer secure. So, unfortunately, I had to stick with piecing together the individual pieces of the videos. I know, I know, this does not meet the requirements. But I just don’t have the video editing software to make it happen. So for now, you’ll just have to overlook that and enjoy the really terrible, amazing jokes.
“Have A Conversation With Yourself” is a required video assignment. Its instructions are to “have a conversation with yourself! Film yourself talking, then change clothes, hair styles, etc and then film the other half of the convo. Edit this in any movie editor program (I used Pinnacle movie maker) To overlap the two scenes so that you are talking to yourself! Play around, to figure out the most efficient way! Also, timing is everything in this! Make sure when talking to leave breaks for your other self to respond!”.  It is 5/5 for a difficulty rating. A friend filmed two separate times talking and then I used iMovie to edit and publish the video to YouTube. My video is “Decisions, Decisions“.
The Story Behind The StoryÂ
I am trying to decide whether I should watch Sunday Night Football or study for a biology test. My biology test is in two days so half of my reasoning is I could watch the game and still have time to study. My other half says I should study as much as I can because it will be a very difficult test. My friends will be having a party while watching the game and I have not been over in a few days. However if I did watch it, I would feel guilty the next day and after the test because I did not study as hard I could have. This is a typical college student dilemma. What would you do? My final decision is…I’m watching the football game!
The Process, NarratedÂ
A friend filmed half of the project at a time. I talked about my reasoning to watch Sunday Night Football in the first half of the film. Once I was done talking about football, I changed clothes, changed seats, and talked about my reasoning to study. Once my friend and I were done filming. I sent the video from my phone to my email. I downloaded it and imported it into iMovie. In iMovie I matched the dialogue together to create a smooth conversation. I had to edit and drag time frames all around the iMovie workspace to do so. Once editing was finished, I shared it to my YouTube channel. Here a few photos to document my process.
