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Video Week Assignments:

1. Reading A Movie
2. Analyze A Movie Clip
3. My Story
4. Ebert Eye
5. Every Hour Vlog

Video Summary

What did you learn?

I learned about camera angles and what they might mean. Things like zooming in/out, over the shoulder shots, low/high angles, etc., all have different meanings. Each one tells a story to the viewer even if the viewer isn’t quite aware of it. The newest concept for me was the rule of thirds. I’ve heard of this before in photography but had no idea that it pertained to movies as well.

Check out this article on the rule of thirds to learn more.

What was harder than you thought it would be?

The video assignments in the assignment bank were all pretty difficult and time consuming. I wasn’t excited to do any of them. Editing is fairly easy. It’s just slow. Sometimes it took a lot of processing power. My poor laptop was running hot for some time while I completed these assignments.

The Every Hour Vlog I did took nearly an hour to process. I didn’t even add sound or effects to it due to the long process time. With more time and a better computer, I would have liked to add sound to it.

What was easier?

The easiest part was editing videos. I like editing videos. I just don’t like creating them.

What drove you crazy? Why?

Recording my life drove me crazy. I want to be a content creator, but I don’t necessarily want to be on the screen. I would like to be behind the camera, maybe narrating or something. The Every Hour Vlog was really not fun. I kept forgetting to record. And when I did remember, my schedule didn’t allow for stopping a recording. Plus, I spend 1/4 of my day driving, so the driving clips are longer than everything else.

What did you enjoy? Why?

I enjoyed analyzing movie clips according to Ebert’s theories. I found this quite fun, actually. In the future, I might just do this while watching tv shows and such to see what I can learn. I don’t think I gain any new information from doing this, but I do understand why I am getting certain thoughts about whatever I’m watching. I’m definitely being influenced by camera angles, lighting, dialogue, sound effects, etc.

In case you missed it, here is the video where I tried my hand at reading a video clip from American Psycho.

Prompt: Tell your character’s story or a story from their life through video. This can be as simple as adding images and putting a voiceover, or recording a bit from your character’s life. Use MovieMaker or iMovie to put together the video and throw in some sound effects if you’d like. It is up to you! 

This is a three star assignment.

#VideoAssignments #VideoAssignments2387

I have never been a person to follow the standards set forth by society. Often times, my path is long, difficult, and costly! But because of that, I’ve had some amazing journeys. From Alaska to Japan, I’ve traveled all over. No, I’m not in the military. No, I’m not a diplomat or government official. I’m just an ordinary person following the path that works for me.

I’ve shared a lot about me on this blog, from my father’s death to my love for piano music. Now, you can watch a short video which gives a brief overview of my journeys. I hope you like it!

For this assignment, I needed to: Tell your character’s story or a story from their life through video. This can be as simple as adding images and putting a voiceover, or recording a bit from your character’s life. Use MovieMaker or iMovie to put together the video and throw in some sound effects if you’d like. It is up to you!

I decided to introduce Jess Carter in a movie trailer type way. I thought this would be fun and a little more interesting rather than a sit down which I originally planned.

In order to make the video, I found several pictures through a quick google search. I used iMovie for this project, and followed their trailer features. It was pretty simple, the only thing I really struggled with was figuring out the editing tools such as crops.

If I did this assignment again, I would probably have taken most of the images myself. It is so hard to find great quality images. But overall, the experience taught me how to better edit the films that I make and how to turn off that Ken Burns crop!

Meet Jess Carter aka Mona Lisa from Jasmine Alanis on Vimeo.

I hope you enjoy!

For this assignment, I had to create a video story of the secret agent character I created earlier this semester, Margo Humphrey. The video begins with a picture of what I imagine Margo to look like. The picture is of American actress Naomi Watts. I then show a picture of Margo’s two cats, Poke and Miso. Then is a picture of a top secret folder since she is a secret agent. Margo also likes to vacation at her parents’ home in the Hamptons so I included a picture of that and a picture of Japan since she also vacations there (hence the name of her two cats).

To make the video, I had a lot of difficulty. I got all my images from Google and uploaded them that way to iMovie. I then created my voice over audio clip with the voice memo app on my phone and uploaded that as well to to iMovie. iMovie has been giving me a lot of problems this week and for some reason wouldn’t let me extend the time each picture was on screen to correspond with the voice over. This is why there is a long period of a black screen with me talking. A little frustraiting.

This assignment required me to tell the story of my character through video. However, I decided to change it up a little bit and talk briefly about myself! I used the whiteboard my roommate and I have on our fridge to draw my life. My roommate also recorded this for me so a quick shoutout to her! It was pretty easy to make: I uploaded the video to iMovie and did a quick voiceover with the voice memo app on my phone!

In the video I talk about being born in California and then moving to Virginia, then starting college at UMW, and now graduating in May! I’ve seen a lot of Youtubers doing this in videos and thought it would be cool to do my own version!

For this assignment I had to design, edit and produce a movie trailer for my created character Rocket Richard. Basically this trailer is for an origin film for the character, so in it I used a lot of scenes that depicted his early years and scenes that shaped his character. For this I used scenes from a handful of feature films, which I cited at the end of my trailer, and combined them to tell one giant story. The story starts out showing Rocket as a young child with his parents. It then shows how as a young child he was bullied and harassed. The trailer continues through his early years showing him playing hockey and taking a fishing trip with his father, who works at NASA. Early in the trailer we see Rockets father pass away in a car accident and how it shapes Rockets character. We then see a rocket launch accident which Rocket is attending and something from the crash affects Rocket. From this he gains powers which he uses to play professional hockey and use the money to fuel his vigilante life style. There were a lot of creative choices in this trailer, I had to do a lot of searching to find scenes and scenes with similar looking actors. Once I found the scenes I wanted I already had a vision in my head of how they would play out so editing was a cake walk. If notice there are a lot of Easter eggs in the trailer from previous posts Ive made about him, one of which being his Chevelle SS at the end of the trailer. Overall I had a blast with this assignment and I hope you all enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed making it.

A few weeks into the semester, I introduced La Señora Luz. If you missed that post, you can find it here. Well, for this week’s assignment, I wanted to bring back La Señora Luz and tell a story from her perspective. Though she had many stories to tell, she decided to tell me the story of how she met her talking snake, Pipo.

To do create this video, I first wrote out what I wanted La Señora Luz to say. I then looked for images that represented what she was saying. I added the images in order on iMovie and then added a voiceover of what was written out (I included a transcript below the video).

Since La Señora Luz is a fictional character created by me, I wanted to speak in another tone while recording the voiceover. I didn’t want it to sound like me. So I did exactly that. I recorded in a different voice as to not sound like myself.

After everything was completed, I exported the video and uploaded it to YouTube.

Transcript

“A story, eh? I have a good one.

A few years ago I was walking around my house when something slithered under my feet. You see, here in the village, there is no need for shoes. I want to be tough. I want tough feet. Well anyways, I screamed and when I looked down, well there was a little snake.

I looked at him as I jumped away and his gave me this look – sort of like puppy eyes. I instantly fell in love. I picked him up and asked him what his name was, like you as a baby. I said, “Hey little guy. What’s your name?” To my surprise, he responded. He said his name was Pipo.

From that day on, Pipo and I did everything together. We’d hunt, cook, take naps, scare the children of the village. He became my best friend. Ah, Pipo.”