This assignment I did is called Play It Backward, Jack where you must take a video of something in your life and put it in reverse, so I took a video that I took of the world’s tallest rollercoaster in New Jersey called Kingda Ka when I rode it earlier this year. To put it in reverse, I used an app called Videoshop. Overall, this was a cool assignment to put this video in reverse, and it was fairly easy by using this app. Check out my video below.
For my second assignment this week, I choose to do a four star assignment for recording a play-by-play, however, I have lost a lot of interest in sports generally over time, so I decided to do a play by play of the overtime round from one of the games of Gambit I played. As far as an overarching narrative, Gambit is a race against the other team – to bank first, get your Primeval up first, and bring down your Primeval before the other team is able to.
I used an old game I played in – sudden death/overtime games to me are always some of the best matches, and I decided that for the assignment I would give a radio play-by-play of the overtime match I found myself in.
Most of this assignment was recording my voice in FL Studio. I had tried to undo that radio effect on my voice, but was not able to get the effect removed from the mixer. I think it might have been applied to the master track, but I wasn’t sure – I had assigned the recording to a specific mixer track. Oh well. I then combined the narration and video footage in iMovie, and uploaded it to YouTube.
For my first assignment this week, I did the five-star assignment called “How-To Tutorial”. While I don’t feel like this lends itself to a story particularly well, I feel like helping someone new to something is the right thing to do if you have the particular skills for that thing, which is why I decided to make a guide on rocket design for new players to Kerbal Space Program. My family has actually been deeply involved in NASA – my biological great-grandfather was the guy who would put engines in the rockets at Wallops Island. Unfortunately, I never got to meet him, as he passed away before I was born.
Because of my family’s connections to NASA, and the fact that I have been interested in games and space since I was a kid, I decided to make this guide to rocket design. I decided not to include actually piloting the rockets for two reasons: because I am awful at flying rockets, and because my main guide was intended to focus on the design process for rockets and how I go about building them, as well as deciding what I would use for a particular mission.
Easily the worst part about working on this assignment for me at least was working in iMovie on my dad’s Mac – since Microsoft discontinued Movie Maker and I couldn’t find a very good online movie editor like Movie Maker, I had to both learn how to work with a Mac as well as with iMovie. As far as the part that took the longest, that would be a three-way tossup between recording the gameplay, recording my voiceover, and then writing the script I used for the video. I intended the guide to be like a Destiny raid guide from youtuber Datto, both in terms of pacing and in terms of the music in the background.
I first started by recording several sessions of myself playing Kerbal Space Program, as well as writing the script during free time. Then I cut down the footage to record the final build and launch, and ultimately played that footage back a little bit faster to ensure the guide wouldn’t be terribly long. After that, I recorded my background narration in GarageBand, exported it, and trimmed it to work better with my guide and the length I had set. In iMovie I mixed it so the music wasn’t too loud and muted the actual game footage, and then uploaded it to Youtube.
The “Play It Backward, Jack” assignment was to “Take a video of something in your life–someone running, the toilet flushing, the sink dripping, someone spitting, whatever–and reverse it!”
This assignment seemed pretty simple to me, so I decided to make it a little more interesting. Instead of taking a video and reversing it one time, I took a short clip and played it backwards four times right in a row. I recorded the video when I was volunteering on Wednesday with Big Brothers Big Sisters. The video is of my Little, Nadia, skipping down the hallway.
I used VSDC Free Video Editor to line up the video with a fun, almost circus sounding song from this website. It’s pretty fun to watch, since the video replaying lines up with the music. I also added closing credits to the end of the video. You can see part of the editing process below.
After I was done editing the video, I downloaded it to my computer and then uploaded it to YouTube. You can watch the finished product below!
For this assignment, my task was to take a video of an action that someone or something was doing and put it in reverse, so I asked my friend Jake to dance for me. For some reason he chose the song ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ from the Lion King. I took a video of him on my phone, but I wish I had remembered to turn the phone horizontally instead of taking it vertically because I think that the quality would be better if it was horizontal. I put a title card, and a pop up for when it goes into reverse, and then “end credits” which were more silly than serious because I was just referencing who was dancing and the song, but it was an easy way to acknowledge these things.
This assignment was the Play It Backward, Jack worth 3 stars.
For this assignment I had to take a quick video clip and reverse it making it off putting and odd. I decided to take the clip of Alex Ovechkin winning the Stanley cup because for one I love that moment and two I thought the celebration would look weird if it were reversed. I used OpenShot to edit and alter the video and I think it turned out well. The video looks odd and seems like the event was almost a dream. I distorted as well trying to make it seem like what you are watching isn’t real. I hope enjoy watching it a much as I enjoyed making it.
Link to Video Here.
This again was a short little video that I just had a lot  of fun with. I just recorded this with my phone and edited in iMovie again. I just used a random sound effect from iMovie and it didn’t quite match up how I wanted.
I originally thought of just doing someone jumping up and down, but decided to do this instead, because it seemed harder to do, per-say, in reverse.
This task asks you to make a film of something and then play it backward, and it seems on this blog that I really like playing things backward. I thought I’d try this one out.
So I chose a running tap because I thought that it would look really interesting.
This turned out really well. It’s not the highest quality but it still shows the rewound process really well. This video was made black and white because I wanted to add to the unsettling feel of the water going backward and this made it really effective. The contrast between the light of the water and the dark sink colour makes it really clear to see the water running backward.
For my last assignment, I chose a video to play in reverse. The funniest thing I could think of was to use a video of Usain Bolt running. He always wins races, but if he were to run in reverse he would lose.
First I downloaded this video and inserted it into iMovie. Then I chose the part I wanted, about 15 seconds of the video, and deleted the rest. I went into the video settings and clicked on the “reverse” box, and I also went into the audio settings and muted the video. Then I downloaded some trumpet fanfare to play in the background!
Superhero movies are all the rage right now, and I’ve thrown my hat in the ring with this short film about a woman who receives visions of future dangers.
“The Small Perks of Seeing the Future” was created for the “Play It Backward, Jack” video assignment from the DS106 Assignment Bank. The assignment called for reversing a video of something you do/see. I wanted to add a little more storyline (and also work in my theme of “the future”), so I built my video out from that general concept of needing a common action reversed. Take a look at what I created…
My driving idea while creating the video was to take something that looked like it was going to be dramatic, but making it comedic/silly. Blending an every day occurrence with a supernatural power struck me as having great potential for this effect. There is also some conceptual layering in there, contemplating the “what if” of changing the path of the future if we can see the consequences in advance.
As I was making the video, I kept thinking about the things we “know” are going to happen that we avoid addressing/keep putting off for the future (I’m sure everyone can come up with their own examples – whether small, like not stopping for milk when you know you’re going to be out the next day, or big, like global warming).
My choice of video assignment covered three main factors: personal appeal, resource availability, trying something new to me. I liked the simple setup of the assignment and that it left subject matter up in the air. I was fairly confident that I could produce an appropriate video with my camera and Windows Movie Maker. And, finally, I have never reversed a movie before, so that was my new element.
I was partly right and partly wrong about resources. I could produce most of the video with camera and Movie Maker. However, reversing video in Movie Maker is not a built-in feature. I did some research, and it looks like people have taken still shots from each frame to re-create the video in reverse order.
After filming and loading my video to the computer, I tried about ten still shots in Movie Maker and then went back to researching. It wasn’t difficult to find a reputable-sounding app, simply called “Reverse” that worked with my Android phone. I moved some video clips around, and, Voila!, I had the effect I needed. A visit to YouTube’s Audio Library for background music, some quick narration card creation using Microsoft Publisher, and then back to Movie Maker to finish up editing.
All of this took more time than it sounds like it would (I spent a day trying out different concepts and test videos, and actually getting all the filming set up and finished always lasts a bit longer than one would think…), but this is the way of video projects!
