For my Video Essay I decided to focus on a specific theme that has been shown throughout all of the seasons thus far. The theme institutional dysfunction is one that is shown through many of the characters. From McNulty to the Mayor and even in the Barksdale Organization this theme is portrayed numerous times. I focused on the police department and the mayor for the scenes I wanted to show. Basically, the department is dysfunctional. Numerous guys go behind each others back and black mail each other to get what they want. They are all extremely selfish and only care about themselves and not about others.

I used scenes from Season 3 episode 11 and 12 and also from Season 4 Episode 5 (I know it is a little ahead of what we were suppose to watch but I found a scene that I wanted to use). I could not find the exact scenes on youtube so I downloaded them from the UMW Media Hub. Using Windows Live Movie maker I cut the scenes I wanted. I decided to take a different approach to the video essay. I did not want to talk over the scene while it was playing because I felt that it was distracting while I was listening to the speaker. So what I did is I talked on a still picture and then played the scene and then discussed the scene after it played. Not that this is the right way or not to do it I just felt this was best for my essay. I used audacity to record my thoughts and then inserted them in with the video clips to get my final product.

For the video essay assignment I chose Season 1 Episode 5 for analysis because it’s where we see Omar become established as a power player.  He’s in everyone’s business, he knows what is going on, and he knows which drug dealers he can stick up and exactly when the stash is full. Enjoy!

A friend once told me, “It’s always good to look back once a while, there are some memories you would like to remember eventually.” After remembering my friend say that, I thought for the video essay assignment like why not look back at Season 1 of The Wire. I wanted to do Season 1 Episode 1 because to me it’s the intro of The Wire so it’ll show who’s who and which character does what. I wanted to relate it to the theme seniority that happened in this episode. I chose only scenes of which I thought was the main ones to relate to seniority. I used Wondershare to cut the clips of the scenes of which I downloaded from Mediahub and used audacity to record of my commentary.

When I finished this, I kept thinking like I wouldn’t be able to finish this but when I did, I was like:

Without further ado, here is my video essay! Enjoy!

For the Video Essay assignment worth 5 stars, I chose 3 scenes from Season 4, Episode 3 of The Wire, “Home Rooms.” I downloaded the episode from the Wire 106 website and then imported it into iMovie. I only moved the scenes I was providing commentary for to the actual timeline in iMovie. Then, I recorded my commentary using iMovie’s recording feature.
The scenes I picked were the most enjoyable/most intense scenes in my opinion from the episode.
Here’s my final product:

-embed coming soon, youtube decided to flag it for copyright-

OR

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl1BqPCZJNI 

To do my video essay on the Wire, I utilized the scenes from episode 11 of season 3, where Carcetti questions Bunny’s motives behind Hamsterdam. While the most memorable moment of this episode would no doubt be Stringer’s death, I still thought there were plenty of meaningful and artistic moments throughout the episode. I used Windows Movie Maker to edit the clips together and overlay a narration. This is where I finally came across one of the programs main limitations. In certain parts of the video, the audio/video come out of sync. While my narration isn’t affected, it’s still pretty annoying to see. I fixed it up as much as I could, but there was only so much I could do with the files I had. Overall I hope it doesn’t detract from the quality of the analysis.

Difficult Rating: 5 stars

I chose scenes from season 4 episode 2 for my video essay. On Wednesday, Jim, Paul, Travis, and I discussed this episode and I really enjoyed the discussions we had. I decided to tie them into my video essay. The first scene is of Carcetti and his daughter playing Battleship. It then shows Prez in preparing his classroom for the school year. Finally, we see Wee Bay, Namond, and Namond’s mother in the prison for visitation. These scenes all relate to the relationships between generations which is a prominent theme in this season. Before this season, there were not many children, especially under the age of 15. These scenes and my commentary point out the theme of adult/child relationships.

My final video assignment (yay) of the week was the “Video Essay” that we were all required to do. If i could describe this assignment in one word it would be “underestimated” because that’s how i looked at it. I figured, hey, i just have to talk about the episode! Um, yeah. That wasn’t just it. I have to sound knowledgable also. I can’t just BS my way through this. I find this aspect of the class difficult. I’m not very good with analyzing the episodes. I like to discuss my reaction and thoughts but actually analyzing this is pretty difficult. I tried my hardest though, so do not judge! I think i actually stuttered a couple of times and definitely repeated myself. Who cares. JUST LISTEN TO IT!

The Episode/Scenes:

I chose Episode 2 of Season 4. It was fresh in my head and i felt i had a lot of thoughts on it. The scenes i chose were great, i thought. Let’s discuss the first scene. That was intense. Seriously Mayor? You couldn’t lock the door? I loved the camera angles in this scene because it reminded me of The Shining like i mentioned in the video. For more thoughts on this, watch the video essay! My second scene was Prez and the classroom. That song was perfect. Ring of Fire. It made me feel really sad because it was so accurate. He did mess up his life and it all burned before him. But the colors in the room implied a new, brighter beginning for him. That’s why i chose it. The next scene was cool too because it was the new and improved boxing gym. I loved how Avon’s old boxing picture was hung up because it tied him back into the show. That’s how to recognized him in the first place during that basketball game (EvW). I enjoyed viewing the boxing coach’s character as a good person. He made a life away from the drugs after learning that it gets you nowhere. I was struggling to find my final scene so i went with the scene with Bubbles and his friend. After his white boy died, i was sad. It seems like he found a new friend but he’s trying to improve his life. Go to school, it’s great. Bubbles is overall a good guy. I also liked this scene because it included Prez. Once again, the show is tied back to everyone. Where’s McNulty though? Anyways, those were my scenes! Now let me show you how i created this!

Process:

Imovie has slowly become my best friend. It’s not a great relationship thought because it’s hard! Why can’t the movie making process be easy? Life isn’t easy so whatever. I started with downloading the episode. That was good. I opened the episode in MPeg and cut each scene i wanted. This wasn’t too difficult. My next step was to import everything to Imovie. This took me longer thane expected because i kept on shifting the frames and the audio wouldn’t match up. After a couple tries, it was easy. The only easy part of this process was the audio. Imovie has this great feature where you can record over scenes. I had to adjust the sound so my voice wasn’t too powerful and you could hear a little bit of the actual episode. This turned out great! I’m pleased with my final product and i hope you enjoy it. I definitely believe this was worth the 5 stars, no doubt. Here’s my link below!

Stars:5

I decided to do my Video Essay on the first episode of Season 4 of The Wire. After watching this episode, I feel like the overall theme of the episode is learning. The street kids are learning who Marlo is and what the game is about. Prez is learning how to be an effective teacher. Carcetti learns that maybe he’s not cut out to be mayor. Herc learns that the mayor is mixing too much pleasure with business. The episode is one big learning-fest.

Hear a more in depth commentary about specific scenes I found interesting in the video below: