Category Archives: Week: 5

Week 5 Summary

Before coming into this week, I thought that I would be facing unprecedented amounts of DS106 assignments that would take up my entire week. To my surprise, it wasn’t that bad! It was actually the least amount of work so far, and I’m glad to have a little bit of downtime for this class while I focus in on other piling assignments. The majority of this week was to work on the film analysis assignment, which took up most of my time. Before that though, I made a post on my updated goals for DS106.

Goals for DS106 Revisited

I wouldn’t say my overall goals have shifted in any significant way, but I definitely had an enlightenment moment about the audio and visual storytelling effects and it genuinely piqued my interest. I wrote more about it in the post above.

I also did two daily creates for this week, which I put in my daily create roundup for the week.

Daily Create Roundup: Week 5

Now onto the meat of this week; the video analysis. I decided to go with WALL-E again to create an analysis on the cinematography, rather than the premise and themes that I explored in my first DS106 blog post.

Film analysis: Coming Full Circle with WALL-E – My Favorite Project So Far!

I delved into my creative process more in my post, but I’m super proud of how this turned out! Definitely one of my best DS106 works so far.

And that’s it for this week. We’re looking into the other side of filmmaking now; creating one ourselves.

Film analysis: Coming Full Circle with WALL-E – My Favorite Project So Far!

This is hands down my favorite ever project for DS106.

Initially I had a hard time coming up with a film to analyze. I don’t have any subscriptions to any streaming platforms, so I had to do my best to find clips on YouTube. While brainstorming, I had a lightbulb moment that reminded me of a particular scene in WALL-E that I wanted to delve further into.

I picked a scene where the majority of the attention is put on the characters. I focused in on the close-ups of the characters, and how different cinematography elements were strung together to tell a story without the use of dialogue.

I used OBS to recording my desktop screen, with the audio recording on. I wrote a script beforehand and printed it out to read, and it was recorded all in a continuous take. This allowed me to not perform any extra work of overlaying my voice on the clip, nor did I have to download the video to my computer. However, this forced me to record everything in a single take, which gave me no leeway to mess up any of my lines for 3 minutes. It took way too many takes than I want to admit to get all of my lines down, and timing my commentary with the transitions of the clips was even more difficult.

Once I did get it down though, I was so satisfied with the end result. I think this is one of my best works so far, and I had a blast walking through the creative process behind the analysis. I’d argue that the timing of the commentary is a method of storytelling in and of itself, and I think it really shines through in my WALL-E analysis.

I’ll definitely explore editing clips in a video editor in the future, but learning OBS was a great experience for the rest of my DS106 journey.

Goals for DS106 Revisited

Looking back at my first post, I made an honest reflection on why I decided to enroll in the course and what my outlook for the future is. I’d say that most of this still stands true, but I’d like to add how my perspective of audio and visual elements shifted within the last 2 weeks.

I listened to a variety of audio storytelling pieces in the assignments I did as well as the DS106 radio session. I was fascinated by the amount of detail and attention that goes into the careful crafting of sounds to create a narrative. The audio stories that I created for my assignment bank projects was my first venture into creating these myself, and although I’m still a novice, I found myself really enjoying the work. For the visual side, I’m currently working on the film analysis assignment, and this has also given me a new perspective on popular films that I have watched.

The bulk of this class is still storytelling and updating the blog, but I have definitely found a greater appreciation for the attributes that make up these stories. I’m looking forward to doing more audio and visual work for the rest of the semester.

Daily Create Roundup: Week 5

Here are my daily creates for week 5!

This first one was made with a tool from https://mutsuacen.com/ to draw any squiggly pattern the heart desires. There wasn’t any specific instructions for this create other than to mess around with it. I decided to create an intersecting object with geometric patterns that squiggle around. No particular meaning behind it but it looks cool!

The last one was a poem portrait where the user puts in a word of their choice along with a picture of themselves, and Google generates a portrait wall along with a gradient of colors. Not sure how the selfie affects the end result and what the AI algorithm does with it, but I did this a few times with different results each time.

Weekly Summary: wk 5

This week’s assignment was pretty easy. I enjoyed watching the videos that we were assigned and how much in-depth filming a movie is. Having the cameras move and have different angles can really change the perspective in films. I never really paid attention to the camera angles in films until now. For example, in the “Hitchcock on Editing and the Kuleshov Effect” video Mr. Hitchcock goes into depth about filming a murder scene where a lady gets murdered in the shower. He can’t show the full naked woman getting stabbed in the shower, so by films a little montage of her, like taking shots of her head getting wet by the shower head, her shadow through the shower curtain, etc. I find it interesting because creating a montage of small films can really help the audience get a grasp of what the storyline is really telling, without needing to show the full naked women. Overall, I enjoyed doing this week’s assignments.

Week 5: Video Essay!

Daily creative: wk 5

Week 5: Video Essay!

In this video essay, I used an application that I already have experience with called Viedoleap. I used a scene from “The Help” The movie is focused on maids during the Civil Rights Movement in 1963. The maid that bought the pie is named Minny was unjustly fired from Hilly and wanted to seek revenge on her. In this scene, the main object between them is the pie. There are some shots that I noticed that I read in the article Pressbooks, which occurred within this scene like a tracking shot where the camera moves along with the character on the screen following Minny’s Movements. Also, an eye-line match occurs when Minny is talking to Hilly about the pie and the camera switches from Minny’s face to a shot of the pie. I find it pretty interesting the more I focus on the camera movement the more I understand the perspectives.

Reflection: DS goals!

I revisited my goals I posted on week one, Im glad to say Im staying on track with them. I have expanded my knowledge with other AI softwares and I find it easy for me to express myself during this course in our assignments. For instance, for last week we had to create a radio bumper and I enjoyed it because I was able to create it how I wanted it to. I find it fun taking this class and Im glad that this class has a community unlike the other online courses I have taken. It makes it easier with having a community cause you can get help in assignments from each other. Im happy with the results I have been making progress in this course.