To create my video essay, I used iMovie on my iPad. I screen-recorded the scene I wanted to analyze, uploaded it to iMovie, and added a voiceover. You may notice that I was speaking fast—that’s because I had a lot to say but not enough time, so I apologize for that. This was a great assignment to work on, and it was my first time using iMovie and considering a movie’s editing and filming style to effectively tell a story.
Category Archives: Tech Noir
Week 5 and 6
I was sick last week with the flu, so this summary covers both weeks 5 and 6. It worked out well since both weeks focused on film and videos.
Week 5 was pretty straightforward, watching videos and reading articles about filming and editing to present a story effectively.
I found the Black Mirror episode “Hated in the Nation” really interesting and creative. I thought it was well done.
Here is my video essay:
This week, I completed four Daily Creates:
We revisited the goals we wrote in the first week of class, and it was nice to look back and reflect. So much has been accomplished in just five weeks! I’ve embedded both my initial goal and my revisited goals.
I chose to complete three video assignments from the assignment bank.
Commenting!
Since I was sick during Week 5, I wasn’t able to comment then, but here are some of the posts I interacted with this week:
I voted! Did you???
Cyberpunk Movie Trailer
Character Movie Trailer Assignment for Week 6
Music by Benjamin Lazzarus on Bensound. License code: VOJ3IVQ4NZCVXVTG
Pond5 stock footage by CleverArts, Powel2097, victorfort, Frameangel, and TokyoVisionaryRoom. Adobe stock video by designprojects. Pexels videos by Yaroslav Shuraev, George Morina, Pixabay, Ricky Esquivel, Rostislav Uzunov, HumanoideVFX, Nathan J Hilton, MART PRODUCTION, Erik Mclean, IslandHopper X, Oleg Gamulinskii, Kelly, and Tom Fisk.
Special thanks to Mikhail Nilov, who made Close up of a Lighted Signage and A Woman Aiming a Weapon.
Extra special thanks to cottonbro studio, who made Two People in Black Clothing Standing in front of a Wall, A Woman Posing at the Camera, A Woman Wearing a VR Headset Sitting on the Floor, and A Human Hand Touching Prosthetic Arm.
I made this with the websites above and edited them in OpenShot. I manually clipped each shot and placed them together, sometimes changing the audio levels or frame. I tried to make a trailer that implies we are looking through a robot’s eyes and shows different levels of destruction that could occur throughout the city, particularly if people or robots began to riot. I would’ve liked more shots involving robots or androids, but beggars can’t be choosers when it comes to stock photos. I hope it encompasses the themes of both cyberpunk and tech noir.
Week 6
Week 6 was a relatively easy week, The daily creates were very intresting especially the one where we had to say “There has been a murder” in a scottish accent. I found that one a little diffcult because ive near tried to speak with any accent. The video assignments from the assignment bank were a little trick to find some that i could relate to the chracter DK. I used apples Imovie to create the 30 sec memory and put clips together using capcut to create the tiktok.
Weekly Summary Six
The hardest thing about this week was choosing the video assignments I wanted to do and how to incorporate my character. At the beginning I think I was thinking about it literally, I thought that my character had to be in the video however, after looking at some of the video ideas I realized that I could reframe the assignment and mold them to my characters description. The first assignment I did felt complicated when creating it however, I think the video came out well. The mix of videos and photos allowed the video to still have a sense of interaction. In addition to this the X’s in the video came from a green screen tricked I learnt in a previous class. The second assignment was interesting as I was putting myself in the chose of my character a little more and developing a relationship to things within the real world with a fake person. At first it was a little bit confusing because I felt as though I was taking about myself, so I tried to add things that do not relate to me whatsoever. I used PremierPro for both projects. I think Premier having the option to have multiple tracts, make it easier to stack videos, photos and audio. For the last assignment I used iMovie, which was not intervention however, I was having some trouble with my Fantastic Mr Fox footage so I used an alternative.
With working on my videos, I got a little distracted and forgot about the daily creates so I did one at the beginning and end of the week. The daily creates I did where polar opposites of one another but, I think that made them interesting.
Reviewing my goals was definitely helpful in addressing the benefits of this class and the progress I am making. As this is an asynchronous class it is often difficult for me to have a general understanding of what is going on as I am not checking in with anyone face to face. Looking back at goals that I established for myself allowed me to see that I am in a good space and I can afford to take more risks. I feel like I took a bigger risk than anticipated this week with creating three videos and editing them all, although the videos were not long editing always takes me awhile.
Bane’s growth through the years
These pictures are in chronological order from when Bane (DK’s sidekick)was a puppy to all the way grown. Even though Bane can be a handful and a wild case, he is often what keeps DK same.
Reviewed Goals
I had no expectations for this class as I don’t know anyone who was in it previously in the class. As I have done digital classes before, I felt prepared in the begining but I wanted to develope new skills. For the first assignmnets I did not learn anything new, I felt as though I was developing on the skills I already had. I really like the assignment page, having the choice between a multitude of assignmnets at different levels allowed to to feel more in control of what I was able to do. I strarted to learn more with the videos and using different audio tools. I am not someone who has done much with audio before, so that was a completely new experience.
I like the videos that are linked with each assignment as they provide more background information as to what is being expected of me. I think that I am learning more about media, which is what I hoped. I feel like learning more about media and its effects helps with the creation process. I also liked the videos because they help me to get in the mindset of being in an actual class.I now am more willing to try new aspects or tools I have previously learned in other classes. I think I have made progress with creativity, and also stepping outside of my comfort zone. There were multiple times where I could have chosen the easier options and I decided against that, I wanted to push myself.
With my previous assignments I definitely struggled with creating ideas for what I should do, I genuinely thought I was a creative person but I think I can only be creative within a certain context of what is being told of me. I also did not have a lot of knowledge on tech-noir, and what that means for society.
I can now confidently say that a majority of the assignments are not limited to just tech-noir and the topic of the class is not hyper specific which makes being creative easier than I thought.
Beyond assignments, I think I was a little lost with having to describe my process under the actual assignment however, I definitely gotten better with describing the process of what I do. I think It was difficult because I often don’t think about things as I do them, they just get done. The process of writing down what I actually did allowed me to understand more about the process and things I was learning and doing.
For my future in this class I know I need to include my character in more things because it’s fun when I do.
Daily Create: February 21, 2025
Say “There has been a murder” in a Scottish Accent
VIDEO ASSIGNMNETS
FAKE PROPAGANDA – Assignment
Even though this video is the shortest video I have, it took me the longest to do. I first started with the ideas that I wanted to showcase in the video that represented my character. Lady Bird is someone who is anti-government and corporations so she would be anti-AI. Therefore, this video is seeks to get more people to pay attention to what is going on and how corporate greed will be the end of art. Once I had my idea, I started to collect clips and put them in my premier pro sequence. I used from the internet. Getting videos from Youtube was a struggle again however, I screen recorded them and it worked however some of the videos look a little staticky.
Once I had all my videos I started to shift which videos were in my timeline, and the storyline that I wanted to convey. Then I created a script and did a voice over. I also used artlist.ai to choose my music, when choosing my music I wanted to use a sci-fi theme which I think worked out. Premier pro allows me to stack the audio which meant that I was able to mix the music and voice overs well, without overpowering one.
My character is also someone who has taken the dangers of corporations into her own hands and needs more people to join her, and this fun video was a way of doing it.
Of Most Important – Assignment
For this assignment I had to tap into a little creativity outside of what I usually do. It was pretty cool coming up with my own character traits that could be anything. The things I choose highlighted more integral aspects of my characters life. For this video, I used pictures as putting small videos together didn’t really fit the look I wanted.
I did not have a set order for how I wanted the pictures to show up, I decied the order after I had written the script and found a flow. I then went to artlist.io to choose a calming audio for the background and added captions to make it more accessible.
Spoil a Movie in 30 Seconds or Less – Assignment
I had a lot of fun making this because, Fantastic Mr Fox is one of my favorite movies, while thinking about the plot I think the most difficult part was isolating what the main plot was. Fantastic Mr Fox is full of subtext and scenes that do not really add to the main plot. Therefore when trying to make the differentiation I started thinking about the ending of the movie and how we got there.
For this video I used iMovie, this was not intentional however, premier pro was not accepting my footage. iMovie is less complicated and worked just as well. I then went to Youtube and screen recorded the most important scenes that illustrated the story being told and how they intertwined with one another. Once I had collected my scenes I went to iMovie and started piecing everything together, but I soon realized I had way too many scenes and had to cut back. Cutting back was difficult because I wanted to include everything. Unlike my other videos I kept the original video audio from the clips because I thought it helped to tell the story a little better. The audio is also just fun.
Daily Create 2/17: Bicycles
This is the cover of a song by Frank Ocean called “Biking”
Ocean uses the metaphor of biking to represent his journey through life’s different chapters and compares holding onto the handlebars of a bike similar to holding onto hope, finding balance by continuing to keep going and “biking on”
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