Category Archives: videoessay

Hated in the Nation – Scene Analysis

I did my video essay on the Black Mirror episode called “Hated in the Nation”

I thought it was interesting how camera shots and angles can create an invasion of privacy, secrecy, and exposure to the viewers in this scene. I got to analyze how the views of the camera effected the both the viewer and the characters emotions. Also, how different shots can magnify, intensify, and capture how characters feel in the film. It’s really something that I never had to think about but it’s quite interesting.

One thing that I really liked learning in the materials from this week is how to capture an emotion. It’s really a lot to take in and apply on your own because there are so many different things that go into this process. Although, what caught my attention the most is how emotion takes time to capture. Depending on how long a scene is, is one of the factors that depends on how the viewer will capture the emotions. You could play the same scene twice, and speed one video up and slow the other one down and it can change the entire emotion. It was interesting trying to find that in my analysis. The way the camera stood still and exposed the woman’s dead body in the scene, the way the detective was looking back and forth at the body and at the doctor for more information, and the other lady’s eyes seemed to stay more peeled on the lady’s dead body than the doctor in some scenes.

It was also interesting to tie into how this scene represents tech noir. This entire episode really represented tech noir by blurring the lines between humans, insects, and machines, and AI and robotics. The government tried to come up with another solution to bees becoming extinct by creating these “ADIs” automated drone insects. Long story long, a few people died because of the corruption of the drone insects. It really built a relationship between the natural and the artificial and how the natural can corrupt the artificial. I guess they were just a product of their environment. If used correctly it would have been a great idea, but because of human corruption, they became detrimental and disrupted the sensory capacity of human perception. It really pushes the line that is drawn between how much humans should depend on AI, robotics and automation to do natural processes.

I haven’t done a video assignment like this before, but I create this video on iMovie to upload the video recording and then do a voice over. I then uploaded it to Vimeo to share it here.

Thanks for tuning in.

Hated in the Nation Video Essay

I love watching video essays on several different topics. Whether it be pop culture, movies, tv shows, you name it. So making my own video essay sounded like a blast, but also sounded difficult.

The episode of Black Mirror itself, Hated in the Nation, I found to be pretty interesting. The world itself was technologically advanced, but also still looked like the world we live in now. Instead, there are more species going extinct, such as bees, more high-tech cars, as well as automated drone insects who do the pollinating. The plot itself was very long, but kept me on the edge of my seat until the final scene.

For the video essay itself, I wanted to the scene where everything comes to a turning point. They re-activate the ADI’s, thinking that will solve everything, but it fails, ultimately killing 387,000 people. The shots and vibes in the scene were consistent throughout the episode, with close-ups and cool tones and colors. And the breakout scene was calmer than I expected, just showing a couple of people’s reactions to the ADI’s becoming widespread over the city before cutting to the aftermath.

Overall, I enjoyed making this video essay, and breaking down how the filming techniques were used to reiterate the messaging behind the episode.

Video Essay

This assignment was fun, but one of the more challenging assignments. For me I could not get the sound on the video it self so all you can hear is my narration. I have a lot to learn when it comes to video essays. I chose the opening scene because it seemed to have a lot of hidden techniques to make the scene make you feel a certain way. Overall I did learn a lot from this, learning different techniques used in videos such as lighting, focus and shot angles. I started off screen recording the video posted on our home page to record the first scene. I watched the scene around 20 times to get a full understanding of what was happening and why it was. I tried my best to narrate over it, but since it was kind of a fast scene it was hard to get my words out before the next shot started. Having IMovie mute my screen record made one part of my Video Essay not as understandable as the rest. There is a part where the interrogator speaks so you can get a full understanding of what I was talking about, but sadly it was muted. Besides that hiccup Video Essays are pretty fun. Next time I will choose a longer scene so I am able to speak slower and not have to rush to get my words out before the next shot starts.

Where is SpongeBob?

Not sure why the beginning is so blurry… YouTube is way better looking.

My main objective was to have SpongeBob on the video and using characters from SpongeBob to make my whole video. I felt like I was restarting on my project but that is okay because I least I know that I can not use animation. I found my news person on YouTube, and I used the program in order to make him say different phrases. The phrases I used were my own wording, but I did the text to speech to get his voice. The news person was not hard because I was working with the program when we were first introduced to it, I did all of my problem solving back then.

During my making of this video, there was a lot of trial and error when it came to animation. Just so everyone knows and understand, you can NOT use animation in colab.research. I tried so many times and wasted so many hours thinking I was using the program wrong, so I started reading those error messages and it kept telling me a face was not found. It finally clicked. NO ANIMATION.

After I got the news person all finished, I started on Dr. Oblivion which was way easier than the news person because the video was already ready for me however I did put it into clipchamp to make the video shorter so it won’t take a super long time in the program. I was so excited that I was able to get the program to work so smoothly.

Next, I had to figure out what to do about my SpongeBob voice and video situation.

For the voice I used a website called Media.io which it did not have the best SpongeBob voice, but it was the only website that was not going to charge me, so I took it and ran with it. I just typed what I wanted him to say and in about 5 minutes I got it, and I was disappointed with how it sounded but I mean hey! It was free.

Here is the dialogue for the video: (This was the draft before starting the program and editing)

Introduction person: Welcome to the 5pm news and we start off by saying that Artificial Intelligence has the human society nervous because of how far technology is coming. We have many people upset or angry that now even Tv shows are making it seem like AI is good. We have tv shows like SpongeBob that is doing stand up comedy about AI.

*video of SpongeBob using: A son asks his father why does he speak so quietly at home?

The father replies because there is artificial intelligence that listens to everything we say.

The son laughs, the dad laughs… and Alexa laughs.

Introduction person: Aw yes, the square yellow guy that always makes young kids laugh are even telling jokes about AI. Who knows if SpongeBob is good or not, Dr. oblivion would like to come onto the air.

  • What I asked Dr. Oblivion: Do you think AI is SpongeBob?

Dr. Oblivion: “Oh sure AI…

 Introduction person: Who knows for sure what will happen in the future but we know that SpongeBob square pants will never be lived down. Alrighty folks, that is everything for 5pm news. Have a good night!

For the video, as you may have noticed, there is no video of SpongeBob talking. I spent so much time and energy to find something, anything, and websites. All the accounts I created on the websites just for them to tell me that I need to pay. I hate to say that I gave up, but I gave up. I was running out of time for the assignment, so I had to think about something quickly and I thought, “you know how when you watch SpongeBob sometimes it is the tv static.” BAM! An idea. I was so excited.

I got the static from YouTube again and it helped connect my different parts together of my video. I also used two of the SpongeBob waiting time frame to really draw the SpongeBob vibe into my video without having the visual of him. But something was still missing from my video…ahh yes music in the background. I made sure to add the SpongeBob song while he is talking. I used the same song in the intro while the news person was talking just very quietly.

I got all the pieces I needed and then I had to put them together using clipchamp, which was not that bad, it was just a lot of clicking, deleting, moving around parts. It took me about 2 hours to complete all of the editing, transitions, and rewatching of the video.

All in all, I enjoyed the project, but it was a learning experience. After I finished it and I watched it for the final time, I was happy how it turned out but:

I will definitely give myself a hug because there would be a lot I would change now that I know how everything works with the program. I would add more dialogue talking about the static and make it connect to AI taking over the news show. Thank you to whoever read this post and watching my video.

Thank you to whoever read this post and for watching my video.

Video Essay

I found it very intriguing how Wall-E strictly uses AI during their filmmaking. They have no humans in this film and it is fully animated. However, Wall-E is a robot who does chores that humans do not like doing such as cleaning up and compressing trash using his body.

Video Storytelling

For this assignment I chose to watch the movie A.I. 187 which is available for free on Youtube. The clip I chose from this movie was the most climatic from the whole movie. Most of the movie was simple and not many complex editing besides that actual technology.

Director Billy Dickson utilized white and black when showing older memories. The constant flickering effect was also applied to get the viewer more pumped for the actual scene that is occurring. The old memories are considered build ups in this case. You can also see the slow motioned running of the football players.

Lucky number 5

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.

PLAY
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
Land Tomorrow

Our professor then gave us two daily creates to do this week, which was nice!

kelbellz: “@tdc #tdc4417 My favorite poe…” – ds106 Social

kelbellz: “Captain Felix is so happy beca…” – ds106 Social

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!

Video Essay

For my video essay I chose an opening scene from Stars Wars: Episode 1 A New Hope. The scene introduces C3-PO and R2-D2 which are forms of AIs in this film. The process of making this video was a little bit hard for me. I’ve never created a voice over video before, so I had to look it up on how to do it. I ended up using Audacity to record my voice over then used Wondershare to upload my film clip then I added my voice over clip into the software and meshed the two. This assignment was a learning experience for me and now I have a general idea of what it takes to create a video. Overall, this was a fun assignment to complete a little bit challenging but definitely worth my time.

Ghost in the Shell Video Essay

Beginning Audio is a little loud but it gets fixed in a second

This was a fun experience for two major reasons. First, I got to see Ghost in a Shell with a new lens that made me appreciate the movie even more. The cuts were integral to the story, as it was a living element itself. Since it was an animated movie, the editing was much more involved than live action movies, in a sense. The level of detail behind the scenes to subconsciously give us context and emotion is impressive. Second, I got to edit a video for the first time. It was a simple one with a video and audio attached, but I experimented with the tools, which excite me. Next week, I will use this tool for the video assignments to improve my speed and skill. I have a general understanding of how the software works so I can’t wait.

Video Essay!

I did a video essay about memes! I couldn’t think of an idea right away. I had done some shot by shot videos I had taken and I was going to go in a different direction but I lost my footage so I spent some time working on this. I hope you enjoy! It isn’t my greatest work but Premiere Pro was glitching out a lot by the end.

I hope you guys enjoy!

-Reese Kubricki