This is the Signing Words assignment. I chose to do this assignment because I took four years of ASL in high school and love the language and culture. Because of this I was able to finger-spell this phrase without a problem!
It has definitely been a while since I have signed, and it for sure has been a while since I have had to record myself signing. My last year of ASL was online due to COVID. Yikes.
I recorded this short video on my phone and got rid of the sound in iMovie. Do you know what I am finger-spelling?
This is video assignment 30 Second Memory and I chose to do this with my character Evelyn as we follow her into the memory of college move-in.
College move-in can be so stressful. You have to make sure you have all of your stuff, traffic can be an issue, you have to get all your college supplies and your dorm key, its hot and everyone is upset, and finally you have to say goodbye. Evelyns experience moving in was no different. Her dorm started off small, but the campus was beautiful. Follow her into her memories as she remembers what the first few hours of college move-in was like for her.
To do this assignment I found some clips that I liked of other people moving into college and importing that into iMovie. I added some filters like a cool tone to the airport and plane. And then a warmer tint in the dining hall to give it an “evening” look. I then used the “modern” theme music from iMovie and adjusted the volume accordingly.
When I saw the Top 10 assignment, I knew I wanted to do it, especially with movies. But, I thought I would make it for Veronica where she could share her Top 10 favorite movies.The genre tends to vary, but also falls under the same theme, with it being crime, thriller, action, or a murder mystery, but they differ in style and time periods. It did take some research in order to find the best rated movies under these genres. They range from Kill Bill Volume 1 to Miss Congeniality. In order to make the video, I used ClipChamp to edit the video and add the audio. I recorded the audio on the voice memos app on my phone, as well as made a script to stick to throughout the video. I tried (emphasis on tried) to act like Veronica would in the audio, but I did the best I could. I then found movie posters on google, and then created graphics on Canva to make a visual for the video, as well as found the background music on Pixabay.com. Overall, this was super fun as it allowed me to think outside the box, and imagine myself as Veronica in order to find her favorite movies.
I opted to further engage with my course character by unearthing a video that she made during high school. Based on the information in my introduction post, Bethany would have been in school around 2012.
After deciding the perfect early-2010s track to play, I downloaded it using a YouTube to mp3 converter. I used the same converter to download a couple of videos of 2012 high schoolers, which I included in the final video. All of the images came from Pinterest, which I sourced primarily from a search asking for “2012 high school.” Bethany was a pretty mainstream, normal girl, so all of these pictures and videos may seem average but are perfectly her!
For this assignment, I decided to portray one of Bethany’s friends giving her a toast at her housewarming party. I fell curse to an echo-ey room, but it makes it feel like it really is an empty room! The assignment didn’t go into depth about how long the toast should be, so mine ended up being quite short. I recorded everything in ClipChamp and trimmed the beginning and end. I played around with adding crowd noises, but I felt like I couldn’t get it to properly layer with the audio from my video, so I left those out.
In order to flesh out Veronica, or as I like to call her Vee, as a character even more, I thought I would give a sort of backstory as to why she is in the field she is in now, or why she is the way she is. To give context (but not too much as you will have to watch the video to see), she starts off in the criminal justice system working as a detective, but realizes the corruption that comes with it, and decides to go rogue. This was a bit difficult, as I am not very good at drawing, so visualizing her as a character was hard. So, I decided to keep it ambiguous for now, but still include realistic images and videos in order to accurately recreate her backstory. I found most of these images and videos either from Pixabay.com or from Canva and downloading it. I edited on ClipChamp which is included on Microsoft 365. It is simple and gets the job done as far as completing this assignment. After, I was proud of what I made. It isn’t perfect, but I think it doesn’t look too amateur and gets the story across perfectly.
For this video assignment, I decided to talk about the thing I can’t stop talking about: plants! All of the information included in this video is from my own experience becoming a plant parent this year. I included some pictures of my plants as a character witness.
To create this video, I used Microsoft ClipChamp and recorded everything directly in the software. Ideally, I would have been in a room that is not quite so echo-ey, but I didn’t have the ability to do that this week!
My identity is something I hold very dearly and work every day to express. As someone who is far and away from any sense of normalcy, it took me so long to embrace those differences rather than be ashamed of them. This video assignment allowed me to briefly showcase some of the most crucial traits of myself that I find most inherent to what makes me who I am.
I used CapCut and TikTok to create this video as it was the easiest way to access and play around with my camera roll as well as adding audio. It was very difficult choosing which photos to use as I have so many full of amazing memories that made me the person I am today, but I was able to narrow it down to some of my favorites. The song in the background is Swamp Thing by The Chameleons, a band that I am not only friends with, but a band that has helped me through the darkest times of my life. This song in particular is one I listen to on loop when I’m feeling down, defeated, or alone and it is what helped me survive my first semester back in the fall of 2023; it feels like the song that I am most connected to.
Making this was a very emotional, cathartic experience. I’ve been incredibly sick these last two weeks due to complications with my disability being impacted by the wild fluctuations with the weather as well as it being illness season, so I haven’t really felt like myself lately. However, going through all my photos, putting this all together, adding the music, it reminded me who I am which is something I really needed.
I was looking back on one of my assignments from week 3 where I made an aesthetic song lyric image to represent my character, Lenore, and it had me thinking what other songs would represent her. With her working in a music-based scene, it didn’t feel right to only have one song that she connected with, so I decided to find another and create a lyric video snippet to showcase it.
I ended up choosing Demons by Empathy Test as the lyrics not only represent her troubled past and struggles with herself and her dreams, but the chorus provides a glimpse into the haven she’s made for herself and thrives in now. To get the right audio snippet, I scree-recorded my Spotify and converted it to an audio track that I then put into WeVideo as I have the most experience editing there. I chose a light background to compliment the soft sounds of the synths and vocals, and a dark font color coupled with a classy font for the verse lyrics to represent living in darkness on the inside, but never letting it affect her outward appearance. For the chorus, I added various fonts and colors as well as graphics to showcase a new vibrancy and variety that Lenore finds in her life.
The process of this was a lot more time consuming than I fully anticipated. Syncing up the text with the lyrics, getting everything stylistically correct, adding transitions to bring life to the lyrics, just creating a minute and a half of video took me about 2-2.5 hours. It’s a good thing I love this song and normally listen to songs on loop anyways because otherwise I would’ve gotten really sick of this song really fast.
It’s funny how perspective can change everything. From this video, it look cold but dry, nothing around except bushes and grass on the brink of death. But just outside of the reach of this video, there’s snow that had fallen the previous day. Shooting this video of the cold winter night was an assignment I didn’t think I would be doing, just me sitting in the cold. What it does though, is emphasize connecting with watchers without sound or a lot of background activity, just you, and the cold night sky. I think this assignment is a reminder that in a video, one can control what you can and cannot see, preventing crucial information that help help in understanding the surroundings and context.
