This class has been very fun. I have enjoyed being able to do research into the digital world. Going to the Digital Knowledge Center has been fun to do to learn more about the digital world. I will look to continue learning more as I feel there is still so much to learn. I liked how we we able to do an assignment like this as I was able to get more creative opposed to a boring test.
Category Archives: video assignments
They need us
I gave a lot of thought on how I wanted to do the short video for my last DS 106 assignment. We were asked to pretend we were giving a short speech at a conference. There were some points we were asked to hit. Could not be longer then 2 mins or we would fail! Just kidding about failing. I realized Aggressive Technologies needs us, the consumer and the worker.
I put some of my favorite things I have made for a slide show to watch while you listen to me drone on and on and on. If you paid close attention, I threw a picture of myself in there. I mentioned the creation of characters for the class and the radio show. Those were some of my favorite things we/ I did. I am also very proud of my fake 911 call about a skunk in a house. Ravioli Radio was a joy to create. The whole team was amazingly creative. I thoroughly enjoy listening to our show. Ravioli team don’t let anyone steal your joy from your creative work. Art is subjective not everyone is going to like it. Remember Jesus was perfect, and they murdered him. Not everyone is going to like what you like or even like you. In DS 106 it truly is the weird and the wonderful. Aggressive Technologies is just jealous of us.
Final Project – Breaking News
The final project for DS 106. I came to this class scared of failure. I have not done much with computers and felt I was starting behind where most of the students in the class were. I was probably wrong. I have pushed myself to try something new every week or attempt to succeed at something I had previously failed at. In the final project I wanted to finally make my evil brick creation speak. I also wanted to try to recreate the magic of working in a group like in the radio project. I think I reached both of those goals.
My group all came through with great content. Everyone put in great effort to make content for the news broadcast. Destiny Sunrisen – destiny’s lil blog 
Was the editor for the first half of the news show and I put together the second half. It felt good to trust someone else with a hunk of the work and not be a control freak. I have checked out Destiny’s work throughout the semester and in Ravioli Radio and knew they could handle it. They do excellent work. Greta According to Greta – WordPress site (gretahammen.com) did the news anchor to tie everybody’s work together. It was also an important bit to make the whole piece feel connected and together.
. I am not good at delegating and trusting people to do things. I have think I have successfully done that this time. Marisol Sol’s Wrld – Bright like the Sun (mjuarez.com) came through as always with the great idea and video of the Ring Door Bell. Last but not least we got a new to use group member Leila Leila’s Corner – Her interlude (the-comeup.com). She created some fantastic news segments on self-driving cars and vending machines going after us. Everyone in the group did more than what I mentioned here. If you want to hear more about them, please click on the links to their blogs.
I created the chat in discord and a google doc for us all to stay organized. I put up a sample outline in the google doc for us to start with and content idea list. Everyone could add or change things at any time. I found videos of stuff I thought fit the AI uprising theme and put links to it on the google doc. The news show Idea gave everyone the opportunity to make different types of digital media. I was dead set on animating that brick if it killed me, so I didn’t use any of the video I found. (One video was an ad for a movie about a car tire that came alive. https://youtu.be/hVKgY1ilx0Y?si=LWg6bjTOq4ETqEf4) I also made some ridiculous posts on Facebook about AI. I then changed my profile picture and took a screen shot on my phone of the post a few days later. I then put the posts into photoshop and changed the name from mine (Sarah Bradshaw) to whatever moved me. I came up with the names a few different ways. Sally was what I named a favored doll as a child. Some of the names were picked for their amusing initials. And others you can just guess. I then cropped the image to size to be placed on a slide for the news segment. I added graphics and a voice over. The voice is AI from AI Voice Generator & Text to Speech | ElevenLabs name Matilda. I came up with all the writing and dialog myself. I did not use a chat bot. For the Dr Oblivion segment, he is a chat bot. I asked him a question twice and spliced both of his answers together and lip synced it to a video of him. I added the graphics in Priemer Rush to make it look more like a news segment.
I think the things I made really show what I learned to do this semester in class. I learned how to edit sound and video. I learned how to use generative ai to make things for me to use in my art. I made a brick laugh. What once was scary no longer is. Except for maybe an AI uprising.
Everyone in the group has different strengths and skills so I have no idea who spent the most time on this project. I do know we all came together with great work and put it together. Since it is an online class, I wouldn’t recognize anyone on campus if I sat next to them. I will miss them I am sure, when I have to do another group project especially. They were great to work with.
If you wish to know more about the evil brick segment Evil Bricks and Final Update – HURKLE-DURKLING Thoughts for DS106 (hurkledurkling.com) Final project update – laughing bricks are creepy. – HURKLE-DURKLING Thoughts for DS106 (hurkledurkling.com)
Evil Bricks and Final Update
I saw another student used a website gooey AI to lip sync. I thought I book marked their post but once again I did not. internet search for the win! After much trial and error, I figured out how to get my Evil Brick to laugh. I made frames of a brick with a mouth slowly disappear and reappear. I made 8 frames in all. Then I took these and put them in Adobe Premier Rush and copied them and looped them. I then had a silent video of a brick opening and closing its mouth crudely. I them went to Gooey AI and uploaded the very short video and a sound of laughing from free sound. The program worked! it even improved my brick’s weird mouth. I now have to see if I can get it to say something other than laugh now.
I also have been having trouble with YouTube. It worked when I switched browsers.
Video Project – Origins of Evil Bricks
I heavily edited my video plan. While I would love to make the full-length fake documentary, it is just not possible for me to do that the way I want with my current skills and time constraints.
I did find an old new reel on the San Fransisco earthquake on the library of congress website that I edited. It has loads of old footage of broken brick buildings. I was able to place an Evil Brick in one frame. I already knew how to make Dr Oblivion speak with Wav2lip. I gave Dr Oblivion a question multiple times and downloaded his answers and then edited them together in Audacity to give an answer I liked best. I used the edited audio in the LipSync/Wav2lip program. On Thursday after my kids got home from school, I asked them to stand on the front steps and pretend they saw, an evil brick come to life and tell me about it. I think they did pretty well on the fly. My teenager declined to be a part of the video. I had a migraine on Friday, which is the day I set aside for the final edit to put it all together. I had a busy week with class and attending meetings for my children at their schools. Overall, I am pleased with how far my video skills have come. I went from never having made an edited video before at the beginning of the semester to knowing how to do voice overs, adding things to frames, and put words in Dr Oblivion’s mouth.
I have had a migraine all day Friday. I was unable to finish my video. So below you will find a video of a few things I have pulled together. The finished product should be posted at the top of this post by Monday. I used Adobe Premier Rush to make the video.
Video Plan
I am currently working alone on my video project. I have come up with an idea to do an investigative journalist report or documentary about Evil Bricks. Where do they come from? What do they want?
I plan to find videos to turn into victim testimonials. I want to animate an Evil Brick to yell about something. I plan to do a voice over of footage of people walking on brick paths. I want Dr Oblivion to be the industry expert interviewed about AI. I am going to make Aggressive Technologies the accidental creator of Evil Bricks. So, if this doesn’t anger AT and make them sue what will?
I am currently trying to decide if Lady Alice is going to make the video in an effort to discredit AT or if I am going to make it as a student. I would be a student journalist and that would anger AT legal counsel.
What are evil bricks?
outline
Video of people walking on paved walkways
narration: Across the globe people have been the victims of evil bricks. Once peaceful walks and scenic routes are now filled with danger. Where did they come from? What do they want? Are they organized or work alone?
People are asking why now? What is the cause? Some people have suggested magic, evolution, aliens, and robots. While some of these ideas seem ridiculous it is even more ridiculous that bricks are somehow coming alive.
Testimonials
Stories from victims.
Tabitha’s writing: show her art and record her talking about it.
Falling on a walk – use pictures of my fall on campus
House being torn apart by bricks leaving the walls.
Front steps falling apart. (I have a loose brick)
animate the evil brick have it say something
While looking into this problem of why good bricks have turned to a life of crime, I came across a company called Aggressive Technologies. They have been working on advanced AI and robotics. They are the makers of Everlast Pets. Could these bricks be an escaped project?
I found an industry expert to ask.
Dr Oblivion video interview use lipsync
People talking about aliens and magic say AI isn’t real. find movie clips to use with new dialog via lipSync
Use video clips of alien movies. Change dialog.
Aggressive technologies have had their hands in many projects. Some have even gone so far as to call them a shadow government. AT has been unreachable for comment.
Lady Alice quote here
Warning from Frank and Everlast pets
Life will never be the same now that the genie is out of the bottle, and we can no longer trust building materials.
One thing is for sure, life has either entered the twilight zone or the outer limits. We are no longer in control of the vertical and the horizontal.
Show billboard PSA evil bricks. flash evil brick art.
End
I am not sure how much of this I will be able to pull off, but I will do my best. I don’t have a length in mind for the video just that I want it to feel cohesive. It can feel like part one of a documentary series though.
PSA – Everlast Robotic Pets
I knew I wanted to do something with AI pets, when possible, this semester. I thought with a PSA it was a great opportunity. I watched Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers as a child. There is an episode with a robotic cat that is good until Fat Cat finds a way to make it bad. This gave me inspiration for the project.
What pulls on heart strings better than children? Pets. What if you could have a pet that never died. A pet you wouldn’t have to get a pet sitter for. A dog that never needed to go out in the middle of the night. Who wouldn’t want a pet like that as long as it acted and looked real for the most important parts! I bring you the Everlast Robotic Pet line. But Something has happened! A computer virus has been created to harm these pets!
For the sounds you hear I used clips I found on Free sound. You will find links for some of them below. For the voice I used https://www.narakeet.com
I watched another student’s work and really like the quality of the voice. They listed what website they used, and I book marked it for later use. I accidently closed the tab to their blog post so I regretfully cannot link it. I tried to find it but obviously have failed to do so. You know who you are so many people commented about how they were going to use your walk through of the process you did. Narakeet was a great find.
https://freesound.org/embed/sound/iframe/236236/simple/medium/
https://freesound.org/embed/sound/iframe/340062/simple/medium/
After I had my PSA all planned out, I saw this post A frank warning | raptnrent.me and wanted to add Frank with a doom and gloom message. So, I went through the steps (and didn’t need to read the instruction document this time!) and made my Frank without Franks voice. I used Wave2lip to make franks mouth match the recording I made with Narakeet. I then used Adobe Premier Rush to put the video together. I used pictures I had taken or made with Adobe generative AI to give you something to look at while the PSA played. I hope you enjoy!
To connect this to my character Lady Alice E. Smythe I will explain her feelings on the subject. She is quite annoyed that someone has figured out her plan to use Everlast Pets to spy on people. She had worked on this scheme for some time to help her collect information for her hostile takeover of Aggressive Technologies. She is now going to have to have the code reworked to get around the new antivirus software or figure out how to piggyback on what Aggressive Technologies is doing to spy on people. She will put some comments on chat boards to discredit the online chatter about using pets as spies. This company is poised to run the world in secret so she will do everything to be the one to run the company. AI can be a useful ally as long as it is under her control.
Gosh Darn this is Frustrating!
Ok so I thought this would be the easiest of the assignments because I play videogames a fair amount, however, it became the most awkward and crazy learning experience. Si did the Make it Scary, Make it Fun assignment and had to do so many weird things to get this to work and it never did. Ugh. First, I had to figure out how to get the recording program to work. It took a bit of learning, but I finally got the shortcuts down. Then I had to make sure it was recording my voice. It seemed to be based on what the program was saying. But what I neglected to check was if my voice was able to be heard over the gameplay. So, I recorded like 3 hours of Alien Isolation footage…. and my voice wasn’t coming through. Like you could barely hear it even if you were trying really hard to listen for it. The only issue with that game, is there was a lot of walking around and doing nothing, so if I re-started the process, I would have to play at least 3 hours to get the footage I needed. So, I switched to a game that had more freaky moments to cut down on play time and up the scary factor. I switched to The Forrest. I have played it a bit before, and I remember stopping because I was genuinely anxious playing it. It is a survival craft horror game with indigenous cannibals and eldritch horrors and the point is to find your son and scape the island. So where did this go wrong… glad you ask. In the recording software, it has an option to sperate the audio from the microphone and the screen. I was like hell yeah! then I can edit both separately and cut out my voice if it sounds dumb. Well little did I know that it doesn’t create two files, it layers both audio files into one Mp4 and only certain editors have the ability to read that feature… so again, I wasted about 1.5 hours recording to only have my voice show up outside the editor, but in the editor it only picks up the game music… so I’m going to embed my play sessions to s which you get to hear, my voice or the game. Experiment time!
I had to post this before time ran out, so the second vid is still processing as of this post.
Kevin’s First Top Ten!
For this assignment I chose the top ten list. I didn’t really make a top ten, but I did a “ten cool things AI is already doing” list as my character for his “blog”. This assignment was cool because I had to do a little bit of research and find the ten things my character would think is cool. Turns out he thinks he is somewhat of a humanitarian but fails to realize that these are restricted AI’s. Who knows what they would do if given full freedom to “optimize” their processes. Anyway, enjoy the video.
Lady Alice the Investor
This week I chose the option of one big assignment. I needed to make a video of my character speaking with Dr Oblivion and connect it all to Aggressive Technologies. I instantly knew I wanted to make Alice into an investor. But she is not a person to be satisfied with just being a part of a company she wants to be the boss. While Lady Alice knows she is smarter than everyone she also knows she needs to research before doing something new. This is how I approached this topic.
I started by going to visit the good Doctor. I asked him questions multiple times to hear his different answers. I downloaded the answers. I asked him leading questions to get him to mention certain things in his answer. I then wrote a script for Lady Alice Smythe. I used Audible to edit and piece together the many answers I had from Dr. Oblivion. Here is one I ended up not using.
Same question with 2 different answers.
I then went through the process of taking my mp3 and pairing it with the face. It was easier than I thought it would be after I figured out what to do. There was just a little trouble on getting started on my part. I skipped a step and didn’t realize it at first and was so lost. After a few minutes of feeling confused I found my user error and was rewarded with success! I was so over the top pleased with myself on being able to do this.
I then turned my attention to Lady Alice E. Smythe. I have a cold, so my clogged nasal voice was not an option this week. So, I turned to text to speech programs on the internet. I listened to many. I found Textmagic and liked the easiness and rang of voices I had to pick from.
With the voice done now I just needed to give her a face. I didn’t like what I could find online. To be honest I didn’t look too long. I contacted a friend I hadn’t seen in a while and asked If I could use their face. I am happy to say she said yes. I took some photos of her off of Facebook and used Adobe Photoshop to get rid of people and change the setting. I then used these photos to tell a story.
I would like to do more with the photos and get a video of my friend to play with in the future. I will have to see what she thinks of this first.
You may notice a lack of subtitles or not depending on when you view this I may have already gone back and added them.
While I didn’t have Alice actually appear to be speaking her part I like that I had different pictures to use to tell a bit of what is going on. I think I made it more interesting than just the same stiff heads going back and forth to look at. I also Like how I have introduced Aggressive Technologies to Alice’s story and what her interaction with the company will look like. Lady Alice has money and believes she is always the best person for the job.