This assignment was based off Consult with your Doctor. I have already done this assignment in the past but not as in depth of the one I created today.
For this assignment I need to create my AI character named Josh. I had to create a picture as well has a voice. I will say that creating the picture was so much easier because I used a real person and switched it to an AI looking character. I ended up using Artguru. This was the best one I could find that gave me what I was looking for.
Okay cool, “step one complete I thought” in my head. Next was to create a voice and to be able to move his mouth to make it seem like he was talking. I had found an amazing website on google named HeyGen. This made it so easy to complete this assignment.
Now was creating Doctor Oblivion videos. This part gave me the more trouble because I had to figure out instructions that were given to us to use. While the instructions were really good and helpful I did find myself messing up a bunch. I did a lot of mistakes but now I can say that I could probably create his videos with my eyes closed.
The last step was to put the videos together and to create one conversion which I ended up using Clipchamp. This part was super easy because I had already made a video similar using this website so I did not have any issues. I uploaded it to my YouTube so it could be easy to find and put into my website!
Josh is a Mechanic from a small town just outside of Aspen, Colorado. Everyone knew everyone and Josh did not like that a whole bunch growing up. Josh was different because he liked being outside and was always wanting to work on different kinds of technology. He knew the only way he was going to be able to get out of his small hometown was to get recognized.
Josh started working on old cars that no longer were able to drive. He was rebuilding the cars no longer to drive on the road but instead drive in the air. He would work day in and day out trying to succeed. He found out very quickly that the cars no longer needed gas to start working but instead he would put a program to make it fly without having someone behind the wheel.
Mega-multi-national corporation Aggressive Technologies started hearing rumors about a man named Josh. Apparently, he was working in a ran down garage which this company did not like. They went down to Josh’s hometown in order to offer him a deal.
They offered him a job in this corporation to work on robots, cars, machines, and different kinds of technology. He happily accepted his offer because this was his ticket out of his small town.
This week I was ready to start working on my assignments because of how smooth last week went. However, when I opened up the week, I noticed that we had to learn something new again. Which made me overwhelmed but nevertheless, we started to work on it one by one. I ended up posting some sort of update to my goals because I feel like I know more than I did coming into this class. My thoughts and feelings does leave an opening ended question: what is school if you do not learn something new each class? I am beginning to appreciate this class and yes it can be difficult at times, but it is very rewarding to see the outcomes of our projects.
I have learned my approach to this class which would type all my thoughts and feelings on a word document and then on Friday, after I come home from work I put it on my website. This makes it easier on my brain because I can do all the work throughout the week and then put it all together at the end. So, in my head, first I do all the work and then I put it on the website, and then finally make it all to connect to the page with the post.
With that being said, below is my work for this week!
We started out strong by learning our terminology with the reading that were assigned to us. I ended up taking notes during my readings so that I can go back to them in the way that I understand them. I must break down readings to very simple terms and if you would like to read about how to analyze a film click here.
If you want to maybe watch some videos that were assigned to us instead of doing the reading you can always click on the video play button to bring you to the different videos and my reactions and or outtakes from them.
If you click HERE it will take you to my review of this show!
Now was the part that I could apply what I read and watched so many videos on. Grab your bucket of popcorn ladies and gentleman because we are watching a scene from Tomorrowland.
if you want to read how I made this please click on the button below
Overall, this week was a pretty much light load which me feel like a could take a deep breath from this class. I would say that I am learning a lot but for some reason, I feel like I will have to learn another software for this class soon. Hopefully the DKC will still remind open to help me!
I started this with getting a video editor on my computer. I realized very quickly that iMovie was for an apple computer which is not what I had. So I ended up downloading MS Photos app. Then I started to look at the list of movies to pick one to use for a review. I decided to use Tomorrowland which I have been wanting to watch but never got around to it.
I tried downloading the movie through YouTube but that did not work because I did not have YouTube prime. Of course, my assignment just got harder. Then I thought about how I changed the link to get my audio to the correct format. I ended up going on google and finding this link. Again, this was a life saver! It downloaded in about 2 minutes, and I was able to use the clip and talk over the clip. I think the hardest part about voice overs is hearing your own voice on the playbacks.
The number of retakes and rewatches I had to do for this assignment was crazy! If you are interested in the how come of this assignment, you can click on the picture to start playing it.
I am just going to say right off the bat that I was so excited to watch this episode. I have never seen this series before, but I have heard so many reviews on it. Now I know why! It was amazing from the camera angles, the movement of the characters, background noise, eyeline match, lighting to give us the mood of different scenes.
All of these items are what made this such an interesting show to watch. The better the assembly of a show is what pulls the viewer into the show and the feelings of the characters. It was so hard to think about how scenes were made because I was so into the plot of the show.
Nevertheless, the birds at the start of the show bring our attention to where the shows setting would be; the setting would be the country or maybe the suburbs. The chirping also lets the audience know that it is the morning time. Another thing that this filmmaker did was to make the fly buzz more pronounced to draw us into looking at the fly. The color of the police lights “shinning” into the room gave the audience a feeling of sorrow even before we saw her face. It was the mix of the plot with color to give us a foreshadowing to the police being at the door. The longer seconds after the death that is shown a up close visual of the women looking sad. The lighting of the show also changed from a bright tone to a blue darker tone after the husband died.
This is best shown and noticeable when she goes up the attic and it is looking through pictures. The scene is dark and gloomy. Fast forward a little bit to the camera tracking the women rushing to the bathroom to throw up. Which was a genius of showing the audience the urgency of the situation. Nature also plays an important role in this show because it gives movement to the still character. We see this multiple times throughout the show during the country/mountain scenes with the hair movement and the clothes shaking all around. Other than nature movement there is also the camera than gave us movement through different angles like when the women is unboxing the character. The audience showed her back while the main focus was the unboxing. It was like we were in the room with her. There were multiple different kinds of camera movements, I am sure I probably did not catch them all!
Most editors cut based off instinct in the film. The eyes help the most when you are trying to create a film. Emotion is shown by faces and face movements that help the film but there is no “right” way of when to cut to another scene. When something is about to happen in the film, the seconds get shorter and shorter between each scene. After, the seconds will slowly go back up and hold longer at the end. Films are important to have a rhythm to it to make the audience believe the emotions in the films. Most people will say that editing is invisible because cutting with the rhythm will create a seamless film. Editing will easier that more you cut and find the rhythm.
Ensemble staging- creating emphasis without using a cut. Whoever is more important should be put closer to the light and or lens. The center of the frame is where people naturally look when something is about to happen. Make sure that when a group is in a shot that it is okay to have a person, sideways, back turned and or looking straight. Another word would be engagement with other characters and not just looking into a camera. Making sure that the actors look into the other actors. Moving the camera is a great way to isolate them to give the actor more attention.
There is a movement of nature that draws the audience to the background. Another movement would be groups of actors. Adding more people to a shot makes the scene feel big. He also uses movement of an individual to give the character feelings. The movement of the camera is also very important to show the clear beginning, middle, and end. Last is movement of the cut. Kurosawa uses movement to help with the cut of the film to change to a different view and or moment.
Multiple film makers use something called shot reverse shot. Shot reverse shot is when you go in between two shots to create a feeling for the audience. It keeps them on their toes to see what is about to happen. A long lens feels like the audience is spying when a wider lens it makes it feel like you are right there with someone.
A type of chair that you pick for a film is a piece of production design. The chairs helps the audience see an extension like a clean environment, ran down environment, a rich person, or even a poor one. A chair can also show more about the character as well and or maybe an extension of a situation.
He does not do handheld and instead he puts the camera on a tripod. Fincher barely uses close up because you have to careful what you show the audience. Since he has gotten older he has pretty much mastered the empty spaces.
In this video I learned to never use “and then”. Instead use “but” and “therefore”. Use two stories in one like “meanwhile back at…”. Let one story build up and then when it reaches the peak, switch to the other story and let that one builds up. It is not about what you get but it is about what comes out in the other end. Then you want to close the film with your name and the title of the film.
I loved the break down of this video. He talks about the camera movement, the chair, the looking into the eyes and the sightline. Hannibel Lecter wins the scene and then gives up for whatever reason.
The Marvel universe uses music that is not well noticeable by the audience because it is in the background of different kinds of scenes. The music is kind of like an addition to the picture frame of the film. Now a days filmmakers feel like music should not overpower the visual. Temp music is used in older films and brought back in newer films, just a tad bit different sound. Marvel is missing risk when it comes to music.
Master filmmaker Hitchcock talks about two kinds of montage which is like cutting. However cutting implies that we are destroying something. Hitchcock thinks that instead of calling it cutting we should call it assembly to create a whole. The way he speaks about his film was incredible. I have never really heard of this person before, but you can tell he knew what he wanted to accomplish and he achieved his ideas very well. The size of an image by using a close up with a loud sound effect creates the idea he wanted to show the audience.
I did my research through wikipedia and I learned what film analysis is. Flim analysis is the process by which a film is “graded” on in terms of sound, editing, cinematography, and mise-en-scene. Mise-en-scene is the stage design and where the actors are in the scenes. Cinematography is the motion of art in pictures. Flim analysis is very much like film theory. There are also different types of analysis that has to deal with film like iconic, semiotic, psychoanalytical approach, and shot by shot.
Each one of these has categories that they focus on. Iconic deals with the image, pictures, and sound. One thing that iconic really looks for is the light, composition, and the mood of the film. Which the film critics do not use iconic as a stand-alone approach but a part of the analysis. They also use other analysis like semiotic.
Semiotic which is the study of meaning making, signs, and symbols. Semiotic is very similar to the field of linguistics however, semiotic has three different branches to it which would be: semantics, syntactics, and pragmatics.
Semantics- relations between signs and things to which they refer.
Syntactics- relations with signs in formal structures
Pragmatics- relations between signs and sign- using agents.
Of course, you can always use the shot by shot analysis which they start this process by talking about the techniques that was used in the shot like the different kind of camera angles. There is close- up, long shots, pan shots, etc. They also look at the background frame, foreground as well as eyeline match.
Next,
I read Storytelling which is also a part of film analysis. Here is what I learned:
In this article they start off by talking about how film analysis is easier than we think, especially looking at the bad editing. Bad editing will stick out more because use as humans are so used to good editing that we barely pay attention to it. However, the bad editing will catch everyone’s eye.
There are steps needed even before the movie starts that you can do to help analysis. The first step would be to look at the questions that you have been asked to answer so it will be easier while you watch the film. The next step would be to know many times to watch a film, which should be at least two times. First time watching it you should just watch it through without taking notes to enjoy the film and then the second time you should be analyzing the film.
There should always be a research plan like knowing the background of the film. Then of course you need to look at film terms that are important to analyzing a film.
Track-The camera moves with character on screen following their movement.
Eyeline match-This is an editing technique that shows a character looking and then shows the object of their gaze in the next shot. Camera is following line of sight.
Tilt-This is when the camera moves up-ward.
Zoom-A lens adjustment means an object is brought closer, making the items bigger and takes more of the screen.
In this article, they also talk about the different types of film analysis, which we already discussed in the previous article. However, in this article they also talk about narrative analysis which is an examination of the story elements which includes the character, plot, and structure. The author of this article also brings up cultural/historical analysis to examine a relationship to the film through its cultural, historical, or theoretical contexts. Like asking a question along with, what period was this supposed to represent?
Below is a list of different elements to be searching for when analyzing films.
Flim facts
Title of film
Year film it was produced
Nationality
Name of actors and directors
Genre
Romantic, historical, detective, thriller, adventure, horror, or science fiction
Sub-grouping: action,, comedy, tragedy, war, and western
Setting
Present, past, or future
Time of day, weather, environment, geography
Plot and structure
Important sequences
Plot structure
Flashbacks
Several plots running parallel
Suspense bult up
Foreshadow
Conflict
Internal where the character suffers inwardly
External caused by surrounding or environment to find himself/herself in
When we first started this class, I was asked to talk about my goals in this class. Which at that time I thought this class was only about WordPress and making a website. I did not know we would be going in depth about AI. I think after a few weeks of this class, I can tell you that I have learned so much more than I was expecting. Which can be a good and a bad thing.
The good thing about learning more is now I know how to understand and use WordPress along with Audacity. I have learned to make a conversion with an AI character and stich the audio together. I learned how to create a website and how to keep it up and running. Creating clickable button were the hardest thing for me to understand and now I feel like it is super easy! However, the bad thing with learning so much is that it causes anxiety.
Everyday I wake up is me saying to myself “Have I completed everything for this class.” With learning a lot means there is a lot of time and effort spent into this class and or website. A website I might never use but if I want to show anyone it will always be there for me to open it back up. That is the thing with the internet, nothing will ever be deleted. We will always have records of anything put online.
Am I on track?
You know I ask myself this question every week. Most of my classes I am ahead of which to me is on track. However, this class seems to be different because I find myself working on this class multiple times a week for a couple of hours at a time. Yet, I still turn in my weekly assignments on Fridays around 11:30pm right when it is about to be due. None the less, most of my work has been on time. This class takes so much time that I had to drop working my job by another 8 hours to support this class. Which I am not too happy about because I still have bills to pay but I am still trying to figure that out. Now that I have the additional time, I feel a lot better about the amount of time I spend on the computer doing this class.
I would like to start this weekly summary by saying, WOW! This week overall was a great and very insightful week for this class. We started this week by watching Abumrad’s two videos which were very informative on what this week has intel for us. My summaries for those are just a link away: Understanding Radio and Storytelling – The Wisdom Well (kelbellz.com)
Then we had to listen to an audio that in my opinion was based off of the moon landing. Which was my favorite part of this week because it intrigues me that people have been on the moon before. You can read more about my emotions by clicking on the button that reads, “Moon”
After we were done listening, our professor wanted us to create a radio bumper. Which turned out so much better than what I had imagined in my head it would sound like. Speaking of radio, ds106 actually has a radio station! Which I am upset because I was unable to attend to any of them because my job is very short staffed, so I ended up staying well pasted my scheduled time…but my professor helped me out so much by sending me some of the radio, so I was about to listen to parts of it.
Click on this above photo to read more about ds106!
The radio bumper was fun to create yes however, creating the sound effect assignment was super fun. Like I said before this week was so much fun! I love anything having to do with cats which is why my sound effect story is a cat eating. You can here the cat eating and drinking water if you here. This assignment was actually one of the assignment banks. But do not worry because I did three other ones this week you can view, the post if you are interested are located in the button that states, “Kalimba”.
I was unable to join the discussion due to the fact that I worked late pretty much every day this week. However, I did end up going back on discord to read what most people had to say. Professor Bond was able to send me the links, so I was still able to listen to some of the radio I missed.
In the radio, I do not know why but the voices that were carried throughout the radio reminds me of the voices of the Simpsons. Which was funny at first and then I really started to pay attention to the way the audio was set up. With the voices that mix with different sounds. In the radio with the dice, you can really see how they used both sounds at once. You can while you hear the dice in the background was two different sounds put into one second.
They all have an old sound of the radio. When you think about how people use to listen to the radio vs. now there is a big difference in the sound quality. Back in the day things had a kind of “old” sound to it and now everything is very crisp sounding. I never realize that listening through headphone could change how well you are able to hear different kinds of audios.
Listening through headphones I can hear all kinds of activity in the background
phb256
The timing of the ds106 radio is really well done. Meaning that the people talking have no pauses where there should not be. Overall, very good audios that I inspire to create one day
