The Song Visualization Assignment told me to make a video where I display pictures to tell the story a song is telling. To this, I went with none other than the legendary Tenacious D!
This was fairly easy to me. Find the pictures, put them on the time line, fit them with the song. Boom. Done. I did this when I was 10, literally.
Original Assignment (3 stars)
For this assignment, we were asked to select a portion of a song, and find visuals that go along with the lyrics. I was feeling rather stressed and in a sh!tty mood at the time, and so I wanted to pick something soothing and laid back. “Summer Breeze”, by Seals & Crofts hit me instantly, so I was already locked in with that song. Audio wise, I ended up using the intro, first verse, and chorus for my video.
See the curtains hangin’ in the window
in the evenin’ on a Friday night
A little light a-shinin’ through the window
lets me know everything is alright(chorus x 2)
Summer breeze
makes me feel fine
blowing through the jasmine in my mind
Summer breeze
makes me feel fine
blowing through the jasmine in my mind
After reviewing the lyrics a couple times, I began my hunt for images on Google. It was very time consuming trying to find the right images to fit the mood of the lyrics, and I wanted the images to be in high quality. Then I thought, “Why not add some video footage to balance it out”? A video with just images is pretty boring, so I decided to mix it up. The way the song starts off, I envisioned some type of beach view. I ended up finding the coolest video that fit perfectly with what I imagined in my head. Some guy had attached a GoPro to his RC plane and flew it over an Australian beach. So I ended up using portions of that video along with the still images.
Project window in iMovie.
As I stated many times, timing is everything. I made sure each image/video clip appeared at the right moment, flowing with the lyrics. A few tweaks were added (fade transitions, audio/video adjustments, and text) to give it my own flare. Overall, I am happy with the way it turned out. It took some time to find the right images and video clip, but it was worth it. Check out my final video below.
Credits
Lyrics from ELyrics
Photos from Google
Video from Youtube
Audio from Youtube
Audio/Video conversion from KeepVid
I loved the title Song Visualization for one of the ds106 video assignments, which simply is making a music video.
Still, music video is more associated with Rock, Pop and other music associated with watching cool and crazy people. I, however intended to visualize how color is mixed from 3 primary colors and this video has turned out to be really cool.
Since I have a passion for mixing colors from just three primary colors, I was delighted when I found a Sesame Street video about this, which was spring ’13 when I first tried video together with ds106. However I did not manage realizing my ideas about a music video I wanted to create from the song in spring. I still had to learn a lot about shooting (light) and video editing. Now, more than half a year later I tried.
It was fun but not easy. The day was cloudy and I had to add light, which again made the colors too yellowish especially the blue and purple. I was able to correct this with adobe premiere elements via an effect called 3-way-color-corrector.
Look here for the effect:
For my next video assignment I did song visualization which is worth two stars. This assignment was to “pick a song (or a minute from a song) and create a video that displays pictures that tell a story with the lyrics.”
For my song I picked Red by Taylor Swift.
I chose this song because I love Taylor obviously and because there are a lot of great visualization in this song. She is very literal with her explanations through out the song which I knew would be great for making a visualization video.
To start this assignment I first picked with part of the song I wanted to do. I decided to just simply start with the beginning and go for about a minute. This put me with the first verse and the chorus. I then started google image searching to find pictures that would work out well for each part of the song. Some of the pictures were super easy to find like the colors but some where a bit harder. I had to be creative to find a picture to represent things like feelings and emotions. In the end I pretty happy with what I found (even if some are a bit obscure).
After finding all my pictures I then upload them into iMovie in the order of the song. I then put in the song and started cutting the pictures so that they would match the lyrics at the right time. For this assignment I didn’t have too much trouble with the cutting and editing because I have done it quite a few times now.
Here is my final song visualization for Red by Taylor Swift:
Thirteen stars down and three to go!
Other Great Examples:
1) Just Another Manic Monday, This was very well done! The pictures were extremely well picked. However, at the end the music cuts off before the pictures. This was disappointing and could have been avoided by shortening the length which picture duration or lengthening the song. Otherwise, I loved this song and the pictures were great!
2) Drive By, This song is an amazing song and was perfect for this assignment because the lyrics are so interesting and easily pictured. I laughed so hard when he used a picture of Mario’s “Shy Guy” instead of a picture of a guy who is acting shy. I thought that was super clever. The pictures were timed extremely well and the music was a good length.
I’m a huge fan of listening to music for free. I change my “favorite song” weekly and its nice to not have to purchase music just because one week I’m really into it. Therefore, I love YouTube videos. Often songs don’t have music videos , therefore, I look for one with great pictures that speak to me. I’ve always wonder… who has this kind of time, how do they do it… I choose this assignment to figure it out for myself! I found out that its not that time consuming, it was super easy, and I loved doing it.
The story behind this song, is a story we can all relate too. You have worked all week, you barely making ends meet, but you need to blow off some steam. You and your significant other head out to the bar. Relax, enjoy a round or two. I tried to make the song apply more to college students. In order to do that, instead of the sleepy town I used Mary Washington. Instead of working all week, I used studying all week. I wasn’t as successful in applying all the pictures to UMW, but I think setting it up that way makes it more interesting and relatable.
Once I picked a song that spoke to me ( Kip Moore’s Beer Money) I used audacity to create the mp3 format of the song.Then, in Windows Movie Maker I created a title slide change the background to blue, and wrote the title and artist. Then, I found and uploaded pictures that I believe pertained to the song.
Links to the Pictures: Street lights, dead end. radio, studying, deadline, piggy bank, couple running, bar 1, kissing couple, beer, tonight tonight, bar 2,party , dance, couple, couple 2, morning, couple 3, couple 4, hell, jail
Once I did that it was a little more complicated. I need to adjust ever picture duration time in order for it match the music. This took a lot of listen, pausing, editing, and re-listening. Once I got the timing right, the project was done 
#DS106 if you live Kip Moore check out my video kasmoore.com/blog/2012/11/1…
— Kasey Moore (@KaseyMoore6) November 17, 2012
This is video assignment 467, Song Visualization. It is worth 2 stars.
“Pick a song (or a minute from a song) and create a video that displays a picture representing the lyrics. Feel free to make it silly or stick with the theme of the song.”
I chose this assignment because I am always watching music videos like this on YouTube, I thought it would be fun to create my own! I chose to do Manic Monday by The Bangle because I think it is a song everyone relates to. After all, who likes Mondays?
I HATE MONDAYS. I love the feeling of sleeping in over the weekend and relaxing, until Monday comes and it is back to reality. I always feel like the weekend spoils me, hearing Monday’s alarm to wake up comes as a shock to me every week, it never fails.
This song is a story in itself, about a Morning. I think many have had mornings like this (hopefully I am not alone here). I really like songs like this one that contain a story (especially when it is a relate-able one).
This assignment wasn’t to difficult. First I saved all of the photos into a folder, the photos came from Flickr. I opened up Movie Maker and dragged all of the photos into the program, then I placed them in the correct order. Once the pictures were in the order that they were going to be used, I dragged the sound file into Movie Maker as well (it has been waiting patiently in my iTunes for years). Next I trimmed about 10 seconds off of the long intro to the song and changed the amount of seconds each picture was displayed so that it would appear at the right moment in the song. (This took quite a while and I think I listened to the song about 50 times). Once the timing was all working, I added a title slide and credits at the end.
Photos Used:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/23644442@N04/5331520786/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8782969@N04/2943304181/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/blamethemonkey/5412683079/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ocell/4201081/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cchu/4440403721/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zuzana_baranova/2919215094/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/flyingman/131284292/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brize/7807214458/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/free-stock/7028523331/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andysarmysellscalgary/5843161854/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/12674411@N03/3057895966/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/theinspirationfiles/5551263670/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mafeguisao/5238906773/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rocking_osborne/5362708753/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/highflyerin/4266079702/
Song Visualization 2 stars
“Pick a song (or a minute from a song) and create a video that displays a picture representing the lyrics”
I choose to visualize the song Red by Taylor Swift:
This song was pretty easy to visualize, the analogies in the lyrics are pretty straight forward in describing the intended visuals. I went with a pretty literal theme.
To make the video I google searched for the pictures I wanted(links below), saved them to my desktop, dragged them into a new project in iMovie. Then I uploaded the song from iTunes and had to adjust the length of time the pictures were on the screen by right clicking the photos and going to “Clip adjustments” so that the pictures would line up with the lyrics.
Picture Credits: red umbrella couple on the beach wind the end contemplate falling autumn sin eye
If you complete this assignment, share it! To have your submissions appear below, make sure your posts are showing up on the main DS106 site and that you use the following tags when writing the post on your own blog.
I really wanted to do this assignment since it looked really fun and creative. it was time consuming trying to find the pictures that and I had to look for a lot of them. I also enjoy the song because its’s tender and sweet comparing to everything else that artist release . so Lil Wayne here is describing how much he loves a women and I think it’s sweet. I used I movie yet again this time it was difficult setting it up and timing the pictures with the words but pleases when I accomplished the task. this assignment Value: Two Stars/ 2**
Pick a song (or a minute from a song) and create a video that displays a picture representing the lyrics. Feel free to make it silly or stick with the theme of the song.
This video is by Weird Al Yankovic called Amish paradise which is a parody to Coolio’s song gangsta’s paradise.
