Impacting Moments

Movie scenes

*how the magic happens

This assignment required some deep thinking and soul searching. It was Movie Scenes that Changed Our Lives, and how it impacted our lives. This assignment proved to be much harder than it appeared. I started off with a movie that immediately caught me by the heart, The Pursuit of Happyness, in particular in the scene with the Will Smith and his son. The movie follows Christopher Gardner and the struggles he faces as he attempts to raise his son but also succeed in the world. This clip involves Gardner telling his son at first that he can’t play basketball, and when his son doesn’t object, he then proceeds to tell him that no one has the right to ever tell him he can’t do something. Will Smith has a tendency to leave me in complete awe, however, this scene in particular was really powerful because it’s something that everyone should take into account in their lives. No one has the right to ever tell you that you’re incapable of something or that you can’t do something, not even your own father, so why give them the satisfaction of seeing you break? This scene just reminds me of how i stay strong for myself, and that despite people telling me that I can’t, it gives me more reason to show them I can.

The second part of the video is a scene from Toy Story 3, and it was the basically the closing out of the entire trilogy. For those of you who don’t know these movies…You should probably get out from that rock you’ve been living under! Toy Story is possibly the movie of my generation. It’s about these toys that come alive when there are no adults alive but there’s so much more to it than that! Anyways, the scene that I chose was the one where Andy says good bye to all his toys, but Woody in particular. This might sound ridiculous but i honestly felt as if I saying good bye to my own childhood as Andy gave away Woody just because he’s meant to much to Andy over the years. Not to mention, I knew i would be graduating soon and i would have to say good-bye to a lot of things as well. It just hit close to home when Andy finally let go of what was left of his child hood so it broke my heart knowing that soon enough, that would be me.

The third clip I choose was from the movie Milk, based on Harvey Milk, an openly gay activist as well as politician during the 1970′s. The movie follows his life, and this particular scene had some comedic relief to it. Although Milk had just received a death threat, this did not stop him from standing on stage and giving his speech. He even teases the crowd and media some. This movie was very sentimental to me just because of my own sexual orientation and this scene in particular shows how Milk had no fears when it came to standing up for what he believed in. It made me see that while you can’t get along with everyone, it is much better to die for what you believe in before conforming to something that forces you to deny who and what you are.

The final part of this video is Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, which is basically a sequel to the original Alice in Wonderland, as she returns in Wonderland when she’s older. However, this scene in particular is a very encouraging one and actually something that i do now. Before she fights the Jabberwocky, Alice says six impossible things (before breakfast usually but this time before slaying the Jabberwocky). This is one of my MOST favorites because of how encouraging it is. Before I go into a game now, for rugby, I also think of six impossible things before going in because once you see that you accomplish them, you feel as though you’ve achieved something entirely new. Alice says these things to comfort her as she is fighting, and that exactly how I think now, I say six impossible things that I actually know i can achieve.

To do all of these videos, I downloaded these thinks (here, here, here, and here!) with KeepVid then I realized iMovie for all editing, cutting, and gluing together. :) This assignment was a wonderful five ?’s!

Movie Scenes That Changed Your Life

Remix #4 – Video

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As a teacher, I realize the value of a well-crafted video.  Taking the written word and making the themes, images, and ideas explode in a cacophony of color for the learner.  What many of those learners do not realize is the sheer amount of time it takes to make each minute of those short videos come to life.

This project was the same.  Days were spent going through all of the different options for this video remix project.  Finally, I settled on looking at movie that influenced or left a lasting impact on my life.

The task for this assignment was to find three to five movie clips and discuss through my narration how the movies changed me, influenced me into the person that I am today.  On the surface, this seems easy.  But in reality, I had a difficult time deciding which movies to include and why.  Limiting the choices to just 5 made this assignment even more challenging.  Should I have a theme (best firsts, best teachers, most memorable)?  Should I just say I “like” this film?  I struggled with narrowing down a focused theme so that what I was creating had a specific intention that would be obvious to a viewer.  I finally decided to look at notable films – my firsts, my favorite, and my influencers.  Now I was ready to begin the creation of the video.

 Step One – Collection

I located specific clips for each of the five films that I wanted to use.  In order to accomplish this, I used Youtube.com and a Download program to capture the exact clips that I wanted.  I convert the videos to .wmv for use in the video creation program.  The five clips that I chose were:

It’s a Wonderful Life (my first movie memory);

Star Wars:  A New Hope (my first drive-in movie – influenced me to learn to play the trumpet);

Elf (the movie I watch at least twice a year);

and of course the teacher movies that have influenced me to be the teacher that I am – I leave those choices a mystery for you to discover!

Step Two – The Script

I wrote a script to explain how each of the clips have left a lasting impact on my life.  Then, I recorded the script using Audacity.  This free program is easy to use and save the files into the extension that I needed.  I split the narration into parts so that each file would be small.  In part, this makes it easier to insert the narration after.  However, the true reason I split the narration into chunks is that it takes me forever to get the text correct and I often have to re-record the section over and over and over.  Eventually I have the script recorded just the way I want, and then I export them as .wav files for the video.

Step Three – Create the Introduction

Any good video has a great introduction that captures the eye of the viewer.  I wanted mine to include elements of a visual, music, and text.  After several attempts, I decided to go with a typewriting-esque entry of letters.  This effect looks cool but is actually a lot of work.  Using PowerPoint, I typed out the way I wanted the final text slide to look.  I then duplicated each slide, removing one letter on each new slide until I started with only the visual image without any letters.  Twenty-eight slides later, I saved the PowerPoint slides as individual .jpg files.

Step Four – Choose the Background Music

Music is one the most essential parts of a well-crafted video.  I wanted something that was fitting as a movie score, upbeat, and majestic.  I decided on a song from Pirates of the Caribbean Sound track.  This song would support the title entry, the credits, and the narration between the music clips.

Step Five – Assemble the Video & Publish

The program I like to use for my video creations is Adobe Premiere Elements.  Yes, there are free programs available, but I like the options that this program offers.  When I get to this step, I find it easier to intentionally complete each section, perfecting it’s appearance before moving on to the next scene.  I began with the introduction and the individual .jpg files.  Then I add the music.  Finally, I time each slide so that the .jpg files move swiftly as if the letters are rolling onto the screen, timed to the music. With the intro done, I quickly begin to add the rest of the narration, movie clips, and background music.  The final touches included adding a Works Cited page and transitions (cross-dissolve) between each slide.  With the video assembled, I save the creation as a .wmv file and upload it to my Youtube.com channel.

The one wrinkle that I encountered during the project occurred after I uploaded the file to Youtube.com.  The video was blocked and flagged for violating copyright law.  The file admittedly contains copyrighted creations of others.  However, I protested the flagging by stating that the project was a remix project, one that adds values and changes the components from their original structure.

Overall, I am pleased with how the video bloomed.  I enjoyed sharing it with my family and students.  This is an activity that I would like to add to the beginning of the school year lessons next year.  I often have the students do some sort of creative telling that introduces who they are.  By adding this movie remix project, students could explore their sense of identity through movies.

Lifechanging Movie Scenes

For this assignment we had to collect a few movie scenes that made a real impact on our lives. It could’ve been any type of emotion. To do this project I downloaded some clips from YouTube. I used the program windows movie maker to connect the scene and add my own audio voice over narration for each scene. Wasn’t too difficult just had to remember some memorable movie scenes. My favorite scene was the scene I saved for last.

Scenes with an Impact

Scenes with an Impact

For this assignment I used scenes from 10 Things I Hate About You, Pretty in Pink, and My Girl. All three of these scenes/movies had a different effect/impact on my life. I really don’t have a lot of life changing effects from movies, so I’d say they altered my perspective on life, made me think about certain situations differently. For this assignment I recorded myself in audacity speaking about the different scenes and then imported them in to movie maker. The clips I downloaded with YTD, converted them to MP4s, edited them with Streamclip, converted the edited versions to windows media files, and then imported them in to movie maker. I added transitions and titles before them to give a little background as to why I picked them. At the end I explain in more detail my decisions for picking the scenes that I did.

5 stars

“Let your heart kindle my heart”

Embarrassing confession: I spent a full five minutes crying into my keyboard while attempting to complete the Movie Scenes that Changed Our Lives assignment, all because of ONE CLIP from “A Little Princess.”

Just FYI, if you were not a little girl who grew up in the late 90′s you might not quite get what this movie does to me, but… oh man. Does it ever. In my commentary about the scenes I chose I wanted to let it play out without me babbling over the gorgeous music, so I’ll go into that later. Meanwhile, here’s me rambling about some of my most-loved film and TV moments:

I honestly wish I had more time to spend making this assignment A+ worthy. There’s so much possibility here to really tell a story, to talk about who you are as a person and how your favorite media has shaped your life, the way you think about the world, or even just the other media you see… but it’s Sunday night and it’s late and I’m tired, and frankly I’m pretty happy I found that awesome Sailor Moon clip at all. I must have spent half an hour going through every transformation sequence compilation I could find until I got to the one I wanted to use.

This was by far the easiest assignment from video week. At this point I’m quite familiar with Movie Maker, and can more or less wrestle it into doing what I want. This time around, all I had to do was find three awesome clips that I wanted to talk about (from the Lord of the Rings, Sailor Moon and A Little Princess, respectively—though I can’t seem to find the Sailor Moon video I used), convert them, upload them into Movie Maker, slap some titles and then use the Narration tool to add my commentary.

I’m not particularly pleased with the quality of the narration, and I feel like this video is kind of long and rambly and boring overall, but I am pretty darn fond of the way Movie Maker automatically adjusts the sound level of clips if there’s narration going on. I feel like I would have had to wrestle with that for hours if it wasn’t built into the program.

I also wish I’d had a bit more time, or a bit more eloquence, to describe why these scenes are so important to me. It’s difficult to convey how much I lost myself in Middle Earth as a teenager, and how passionately I still love the world Tolkien created. The way Sailor Moon introduced me to a whole genre of storytelling that would bring me some of my best memories, most beloved stories, most exciting conversations and closest friendships. I actually talked about that in an earlier post from Design Week, and with a lot more coherence than I used in my video. Then there’s “A Little Princess.” This isn’t Tumblr, so it’d be out of context for me to mash my face against the keyboard and insert a few gifs to express myself, but I will say this: as a little girl who relied on her imagination to get through some terrible, terrible years in grade school, who spent a couple of years with more fictional friends than real ones, who looks up to her dad as a hero and who will never ever lose her sense of wonder at storytelling, this is probably my all-time favorite film. Not to mention the fact that the movie’s lush visuals and gorgeous cinematography influenced my sense of aesthetics for the rest of my life.

Like I mentioned earlier, I felt like this assignment had a lot of storytelling potential that I wasn’t really tapping into, and I was curious to see if students who’d completed it before me managed to do so. In the original example, Rosanna Marie does a great job of presenting high-quality clips and narration while giving us a great sense of who she is and what matters to her. She could have used more footage from “The Social Network” to make it clear why she loved the movie so much, but other than that I really enjoyed her video.

The second video I watched was from one of my classmates this semester, and the Indie Librarian really delivered with her video! By contextualizing her clips with an excellent writeup and writing her narration beforehand (NOTE TO FREAKIN’ SELF), she was able to tell a wonderful story about how she grew up in a funny, witty manner. That’s what I wish I could have done with my own video, so hats off to her!

Moral of the story: DON’T JUST RAMBLE. Good writing always always ALWAYS pays off.

One of these days that lesson is going to stick.

Movie Scenes That Changed my Life

For this Movie Scenes that Changed Our Lives- Video Assignment by Annie Belle, I selected scenes from 3 movies… October Baby, Sweet Home Alabama, and A Walk to Remember. These scenes that I chose changed my outlook on life.

MovieSceneMontage – Click once for another page then click again for the video in your choice of player(:  until you can open the file(:   (Explanation for not embedding at bottom)

The first scene is from October Baby. In this scene the main character is talking with a Catholic priest about her twin brother, whom she didn’t know she had. She speaks about his loss and her possibly failing at her life. She feels she doesn’t belong. I chose to blog about this scene because I feel as though I can’t completely relate to what she is going through… but I know I have felt many times during my life that I wasn’t living to my full potential. In that, I need to live every day like it’s my last. Because of this scene I am truly more grateful for every breath I take.

Oh my gosh… my heart melts every time I watch the second movie scene. This scene is from the movie, Sweet Home Alabama, which is one of my all time favorite movies. In the end this opening scene, the main character’s younger self asks the childhood boy friend why he would want to marry her… to kiss her any time he wants. This scene is just too darn cute and anyone with a heart would recognize how silly the scene is but also appreciate the intention of the younger boy in making his point. I just love this scene and had to include it in my movie video montage(:

In the next quick scene from October Baby, there is a line that stood out to me so much that it is now my go-to saying… “Hate the crime, not the criminal”  Those are not just empty words… I was blown away at this point in the movie, the girl’s birth  mother wanted her dead and this police officer was giving her the best advice one could ever give. I live by this saying now. There are so many moments in life when it’s just easier to hate the criminal but there is a higher power within us to overlook the criminal and just hate the crime done.

In this next scene also from the movie, October Baby, comes a powerful scene about forgiveness. We all need forgiveness every day of our lives. I completely lost it when I was watching this scene. The sincerity of the preacher’s voice and message was just so powerful and I feel as though this scene spoke directly towards me.

The dock scene is from the movie, A Walk to Remember. In this movie the main character is dying of cancer. She has a heart of gold. Her faith brings her to say whatever she feels and knows. She wants the co-main character to believe in everything so bad. This scene just represents the truths to be told. I live by my faith and help to guide my friends and family to do the same.

In the ending scene of October Baby, I was crying. The emotional impact it had on me was severe. I felt every emotion the characters played out. The main character finally was able to thank her dad for wanting her… wanting her.. can you imagine? What a great love. This movie is a definite must see for all those ready, able, and willingly to step up in their lives.

To wrap up my video montage I chose to end on a humorous note with the first part of the opening scene of Sweet Home Alabama. In this scene the young boy asks the young girl to marry him. As any 10 year old girl would say in response, I’m 10 years old.. I’ve got too much to live for. I just love this scene because it always makes me laugh even when I am feeling under the weather.

This video assignment was a lot of fun to do. I first started by uploading all the scenes into Windows Live Movie Maker. I then trimmed the scenes into reasonable segments. Then I voiceover-ed some scenes with my version of commentary. I used many captions.

Well I hope you enjoyed My Movie Scenes Montage! I imported it to YouTube but it was taken down b/c of copyright.

MovieSceneMontage

5 Stars: Movie Scenes that Changed my Life

For one of my video assignments, I chose to do the “Movie Scenes that Changed our Lives” assignment that was worth 5 stars.  I ended up choosing 3 movies that had a profound impact on me and 1 that just terrified the crap out of me.

I can’t remember when I first saw “The Sandlot”, but I fell in love with it instantly.  I quote either the “You play ball like a girl!” line or the “You’re killing me, Smalls” line frequently.  It’s a great coming of age story about friendship and baseball.  I’m not the biggest baseball fan, but the lessons it taught me about sticking by your friends have really stuck with me.

And then I had another sports movie.  ”D2: The Mighty Ducks.”  It features one of my favorite speeches, which I showcased in the video.  I mention that I don’t really care for the movie because it kind of makes a mockery of the sport I love, but whatever.  The point is that Gordon Bombay’s speech has stuck with me throughout life.  Also, I like quacking.

Next up we have the scariest movie I ever watched as a kid: “The Ring.”  That girl crawling out of the tv makes me incredibly uneasy to this day.  Something about the way she distorted the faces of people she killed just…. ick.  Freaks me out, man.  But since watching this movie I’ve learned to enjoy horror movies more.

Finally, my favorite movie, “The Big Lebowski.”  I think I explain it really well in the video, so get your explanation from there.  Sorry for the crap quality.

I ran everything through windows movie maker and then threw in transitions for good measure.

11/16 Stars down.

My First Video Assignment…Here We Go!

Title: Movie Scenes That Changed Our Lives

Description: For this assignment I was asked to select scenes from 3-5 movies. These scenes were supposed to represent scenes that changed mu life or made some sort of dramatic, traumatic, lasting, or emotional impact on me. After selecting the scenes, I was asked to create a video that shows the scenes and includes audio/video of me describing what it is about the scene that made a significant impact on me.

Inspiration: When I first read the description of this assignment I was immediately drawn to it. I felt that it would not only be interesting to do, but that it would remind me of those critical times in my life where a movie has really impacted me in a way that I never expected it to. The top five movies that I picked where A Time to Kill, The Pursuit of Happiness, and The Help. The Pursuit of Happiness made me think of my mom and how much she has sacrificed for me. It also inspires me to go out there and achieve my goals and dreams. A Time to Kill and The Help are constant reminder to me of how my ancestors have been treated in America. They also remind me everyday to push myself because I am part of a generation that has a choice now.

Process: First, I went on Youtube and a scene from each movie that captured the emotions that I wanted to convey in my video project. I then downloaded the videos to my computer using a program that I downloaded offline. Here is a link to the program:

YoutubeDownloader

I then put the videos into Windows Movie Maker. I added a title scene, a caption scene before each movie clip, and then a credit block at the end. For each movie scene I added the page curl animation to introduce the movie scene.

Previous Example: Here are the links of two previous examples of this assignment. Out of the two examples I felt that the first one definitely got the message of this assignment across more. The second assignment, even though it told a story about that person’s childhood, did not come across as something that was life changing. It was more about the reminiscing on movies that they watched during their childhood. The first example, not only involves more emotions, but I was able to relate to it way more than the second one.

Example 1

Example 2

My Video:

Bad parenting* (or how I got to watch great movies as a kid)

When I think back to my childhood, I think about ice-cream sandwiches, playing Barbies, hours of swimming with my cousins, making clubhouses in a copse of spindly trees, the babysitter asking me if it was ok for her to smoke in the house (turns out it wasn’t), and watching some great, but entirely inappropriate, movies.  In my early years of elementary school I was watching Jaws, Halloween, and The Shining.  I discussed the merits of Nightmare on Elm Street on the school bus.  Jesus, was I eight-years-old when that came out in 1984?  I definitely didn’t see it in the theater, so maybe I was 9 or 10.  My point is that I was young.

It’s not like I was sneaking around to watch these movies.  My parents knew that my sister and I watched horror films.  My cousins’ parents knew what they were watching too.  It was all perfectly fine as long as we didn’t have nightmares.  It may sound like a totally insane parenting philosophy, but I’m thankful that I grew up that way.  There wasn’t a lot of parental oversight when it came to what I watched, read, or listened to.  If something made me uncomfortable, I stopped watching.  If a book was over my head, it was probably boring, so I stopped reading.  I appreciate that autonomy, and hope I can raise my son with some modified version of that.  I think I’d like to have more open discussion concerning the media and art he brings home when the time comes.

So here’s a short video on three movies that impacted the most.  They should’ve been terrifying.  They should’ve left me afraid of the ocean and afraid of the boogeyman, instead I’m left with some unforgettable memories of growing up free range with my sister and cousins.

* For the record, I don’t really think that my parents’ choice to let me watch these movies was bad parenting.  I think I turned out ok in the end.