So I decided to put my own spin on this assignment, as I wanted to get outside. I have been working on biking more, even though this semester has been challenging, and it always helps me feel better afterward.

So the idea for the assignment was to film myself exercising outside and play music to the video. I realized quickly that riding a bike and having to shift gears and film all simultaneously was probably not the best idea, so it is relatively short. I did find the best audio track to set this video, too, as I really felt it fit both my mood today and the idea of this project.

One thing that I like about Final Cut Pro is that if you import a video, you can very quickly separate the audio track. This made getting rid of my huffing and puffing done easily and adding the new music as well. I’m looking forward to learning something new next!

Unfortunately, I had a malfunction at the end of the ride, and my pedal broke… It’s a couple of years old and made of aluminum, and I’m still shocked at how it broke just from pedaling.

For this VideoAssignments1537, “Exercise and Socialize” we’re supposed to record a video of ourselves, taking a neighborhood walk and play a song in the background that the neighbors would enjoy. Not being sure if I can record a video while playing music on the same iPhone (and knowing that as a human I am not able to walk and chew gum at the same time), I decided to record myself walking on the Heritage Trail near the Rappahannock River in Fredericksburg the other day, then I would add background music that neighbors would (maybe) enjoy, if they didn’t otherwise consider it Disturbing The Peace (one person’s music is another person’s noise, eh?). I chose Happy by Pharrell Williams. It’s upbeat, encourages you walk briskly, puts a smile on your face, Bob would endorse the music, we need it now–it’s everything great about Happy!! The only thing absent from this video is the socializing part. It was a cold day, middle of the week, middle of the afternoon and the rain was imminent. We’ll just have to imagine the people who are normally at the riverside.

To make this video, I recorded it on my iPhone as an MOV file then converted it on CloudConvert to an MP4. I recorded the song from my laptop to my iPhone as a WAV file then recorded it onto the Audactiy app. This converted it to an MP3 and also allowed me to adjust the output volume. By grabbing the song this way, I lost a lot of fidelity but it also sounded like I was recording the music as I was walking outside, so even though the quality is diminished, it’s okay for this project. I knew I’d be muting the sound to some degree anyway, so that would reduce some of the degradation in the listener’s ear.

I don’t know how to adjust the sound volume on an audio track in OpenShot Video Editor (if that’s even possible), and I’m on a tight deadline right now, so I first reduced the overall volume of the Happy song to what I thought would be acceptable, and imported the file into OpenShot. It was too low, so I removed that file and created a new project in Audacity with the Happy song, only slightly muting the overall song, then importing it again into OpenShot. That was good enough to where you could still here my voice in the video track and the Happy song.

Then I needed to cut a split second out of the beginning of both the audio and video tracks at the very beginning. I don’t know how to delete a very small clip but I learned that if I cut where I need, then remove the large clip to an empty track, then I can delete that tiny clip without harming the one large track, then I just put the large track back where it belongs. I’m sure this is rookie work, but I got it done and hope to find out from an experienced person how to be more efficient in the future.

I saved the project, exported the file, uploaded to Vimeo, embedded in the blog and that’s the name of that tune! Have a Bob Ross Day!

What a fun assignment this was!! An amazing time to go outdoors and wave to our neighbors during a time where we are in such isolation. This assignment tasked us to go outdoors and take a walk down our street and make a video out of it. I used my regular iPhone camera to take the original video and then I uploaded it to something called adobe spark video. This allowed me to put a background noise in it, I chose a sound under “uplifting” to give a sound of positivity. If I was to do this again I would make it longer and maybe take a longer walk filmed  and then speed up the video. Here is the video with the background:

Howdy! This is Sterling, back with another week of content. This assignment began as one and kind of turned into another. My original intent was to do a modified form of “Exercise And Socialize” by Jeremy Hillberry, which has the following description: “Neighborhood walks used to be a good form of exercise and a good way to meet your neighbors. Nowadays, exercise is at the gym and socializing is online. Record a video of yourself taking a neighborhood walk and play a song in the backgorund of the video that your neighbors would enjoy. Get out there, exercise and socialize!” It is rated 2.5 stars.

I’m pretty camera shy as you will find out from the video, though I needed to get out of the house for a bit and figured I would record it. This lead to me doing a bit of narration, which made it morph a bit into “VLOG ONE DAY” by Eric, rated 3 stars. “For one day, attempt to vlog your day! What did you today? What was your favorit part about today? Who did you encounter? Let’s hear all about it!” Of course, this is quite abridged since it only centers on one walk. It also deviates from the ‘socialize’ part of the first assignment because, well, I’m practicing social distancing. And I don’t know my neighbors well enough to play music for them.

In brainstorming this assignment, I had some clear, cinematic ideas as you can tell by the clips of me getting ready to leave and opening doors. It took a lot of revisions because half of my in-house clips I had recorded in portrait mode rather than landscape. Eventually, though, I made it out the door and I found myself stumped. Vloggers don’t seem to have it as easy as I thought. I consider myself a pretty decent conversationalist, and I knew I had a lot to talk about regarding COVID-19 and my feelings on social distancing. However, as soon as I pressed the record button, I was lost for words. I was suddenly hyper-aware of the people around me even though they were several feet away.

I didn’t want to make it obvious I was recording, so I recorded my feet as I walked. I got to greet a neighbor as well. I had to delete and speed up a lot of clips of my shoes since I imagine they get quite boring after a while. Finally, I arrived at the plaza that has the grocery store. It was alarming to see so many store closures: they weren’t like that last time I was out. Marty’s (a restaurant) is only doing takeout. The beer shop is leaving. The nail salon has clearly closed. It isn’t shown, but the Great Clips that is always open has closed its doors. That is why my family and I are doing our best to support local restaurants when we can. I hadn’t considered the impact on cosmetology businesses: those involve close contact and tools used multiple times.

Then, I went into Kroger. There was a surprising number of people there. I found that the best solution was to make it into a montage of sorts so as to avoid filming people directly. The toilet paper carnage was interesting to witness for myself. Practicing social distancing was difficult: it was quite packed, and as I remark in my video, I couldn’t maintain six feet between myself and others. I also saw quite a few people I knew, and it would’ve been impossible to talk more then 4 feet apart. The end of the video tends more towards this “vlog” format as I attempt to gauge in conversation (but keep looking in the distance anyways). Definitely turned into word vomit at the end, but I hope you could garner something from it.

While I enjoyed my massage, I worked on editing the video with my phone. My first step was to delete all of the clips I messed up on (I’ve locked the door more times than I have unlocked it). After that, I still had about 60 clips to combine, crop, and edit. The app I used was YouCut: a free phone app that one can use to edit videos. It features all of the basic editing functions one might need to put together a decent video. I separated my clips into 5 sections: getting ready, walking to the store, inside the store, heading home from the store, and final words. Each section was between 1 and 2 minutes.

As you can see, YouCut offers quite a few editing options. My first step was to trim the cut down to omit the parts where I am turning the camera on or off. Then, I muted the audio if it was a montage clip and sped it up (walking was 1.6x). In clips like the one where I say goodbye to my big gray cat, it was all in that one recording. Therefore, I had to split the walking part from the cat part in order to speed it up as I wished. Finally, I combined all of my parts and put a brightening filter over all of the footage. Overall, it took around two hours to edit. It probably would’ve been easier if I used something like Windows Movie Maker or Adobe Premiere, but I wanted to curl up and make a day out of this.

My next step was to edit the audio. I uploaded the video to my computer and then used a MP4 to MP3 converter to allow me to edit it in Audacity. I did a quick little clean-up where I took out some wind and unnecessary background noise. I did not edit my voice much since it was difficult to eliminate some of the background sounds. After that, I layered Plastic Love by Mariya Takeuchi on top (from a YouTube to MP3 converter) since it matched my video length exactly. I made sure to de-amplify the sound a little bit whenever I spoke. Then, I returned to YouCut and muted the sound from the original video, replacing it with my new mix. This part took another couple of hours since everything took so long to download

There you have it! Overall, the exercise portion of this assignment was certainly beneficial given our current circumstances. It allowed me to think of ways I should take care of myself physically, mentally, and socially. I feel like it would be a very fun assignment otherwise if someone is more familiar and comfortable with their neighbors. The vlog part was certainly a new experience. I completely recommend it; we watch YouTubers daily, but do we ever put thought into what work goes into their process? I have a newfound appreciation for them after completing this assignment. Can I advocate that this project is worth at least 5 stars?

Oh, and my message at the end of the video isn’t very clear: I mostly wanted to say that it is hard to socialize with others, so we should use this time to socialize with ourselves. Please note that I do intend to privatize this video at the end of the semester since it advertises my location.

My next video assignment was worth 2 and a half stars. I was a little on the fence about doing this assignment, but since the barn is like my home away from home, all my fellow riders in the video and not shown are just like my neighbors in a sense. The music I added is light and relaxing. Just like how a good ride should feel. I know my fellow Equestrians will appreciate the music. During a lesson, it is practice for us and exercise for the horses. When we have breaks, we typically talk to each other while we let the horses have a walk break.

This assignment was fairly simple to make. I picked a video I already had, stripped the sound, and added some music. I did all of that with iMovie on my phone. I then copied it over onto my laptop then uploaded it to YouTube. I hope y’all enjoy!

For this assignment, we had to walk around our neighborhood and record it. We then had to add music over the video.

I usually go on a walk once a day, so I found this assignment fitting for my daily life.

To complete the assignment, I grabbed my dog, ChiChi, and told her we were going on a walk. She loves going on walks because, honestly, she’s a nosy dog.

I recorded a short video of me walking my dog on my iPhone XS. I then uploaded the video to iMovie. I trimmed a little bit of the beginning of the video. I also added audio, provided by iMovie, over the video.

I then exported it and uploaded it to YouTube.

This is what I created.

This video is to fulfill video assignment #1537 entitled “Exercise and Socialize.” The requirement is to film a personal video of a stroll around the neighborhood.  It is worth two and a half stars.

This video was created with with iMovie application on the Apple iPhone.  A video of the afternoon stroll was recorded, than uploaded as an iMovie project.  The original video was recorded as a continuous clip, topping out at five minutes and twenty-six seconds.  The speed of the clip was increased to 8x the normal speed, which brought the movie down to two minutes and forty-three seconds.  The Apple sound effect titled “Playful” was added as a background accompaniment to indicate an easygoing afternoon stroll.

I did this assignment because I noticed it as I was getting ready to take my daily walk down my driveway to get my mail. I had enough to complete the 12 stars needed but I also decided that I would go ahead and do this one too. So I took off on my journey down my drive way which as seen in my introduction video is quite long and has quite a few houses on it. I didn’t really get to chat with any neighbors on this walk but I did get to wave at Tom, who was going somewhere on the tractor and I also got to socialize with the neighbors dog Juno. I didn’t make it to the end of my driveway to get the mail this time because I wanted to make sure that Juno wouldn’t go out into the road or wonder off. So I turned back and went back home. Though Juno voiced his opinion on the matter as well. lol

Enjoy.

This week’s video assignment fell on the same week I needed to travel for work to San Francisco and attend a conference on Responsive Classrooms. It’s a five day conference, with nine co-workers. Here, let me make an illustration:

I really wanted to be that person who was on top of their homework before going to a conference where I would be expected to extrovert and critically think.

Sunday I finished the required reading. More inspiring then the previous two weeks but still a bit too “embracing an idea without questioning it” for my taste. I’m not drinking the Kool-Aid here. There is still plenty of research that shows negative effects of social media on society and after this frustrating week I am about ready to break all my computers. But let me focus on telling you the narrative of creating my video.

Sunday I also shot the footage for my video, my dream was to have both the reading and the video finished before the conference so I could just focus on my learning and planning with co-workers, and squeeze in the two Daily Creates as I had time.

Oh, but the fun was just beginning.

I did finish collecting the footage and transferred the data from my phone to the computer. Which turns out DOESN’T have Movie Maker on it. I can’t download it either because this is a work computer and I don’t have administrative permission to download programs. But the school iPad has iMovie so I try transferring the videos from the computer to the iPad.

But that doesn’t work.

So I upload the videos to Google+.

But then I can’t get them to download to the iPad.

So I upload the videos to iCloud.

But now I have to go to the airport.