Week 5 seemed like a short one. We only had 4 blogs not including this one. The main assignment for the week was the video essay. I found this assignment a bit challenging for me. When I was looking over the assignment, I was a bit intimidated because I had no idea how to create a video with a voice over. My initial thought was to go to YouTube and find a video on how to create a voice over video. After watching the video, I felt a little but at ease because I had an idea of what I was going to do. My first step was to find a movie clip to use, I ended up using an opening scene from Star Wars: Episode 1 A New Hope. Once I found my clip, I recorded my voice over on Audacity and downloaded the finish recording. Final I uploaded both to Wondershare, A video editing software, and meshed the two together. Overall, despite the challenge, I enjoyed this assignment and would do it again. The daily creates for the week were kind of boring in my opinion. There wasn’t much that interested me this week compared to last week. They just seemed less appealing to me and lacked creativity. My goals for DS106 haven’t changed and I feel like I am on track to meet my goals I set in week one.
So, this week I learned a lot about cinematography and how to evoke certain reactions and emotions from the viewers with simple adjustments to music, movement, as well as lighting and the characters in a scene.
First, I’ll talk about my daily creates. I did 2 this week. The first one was to do a pun picture and the second one was to talk about my favorite poetry. Here is my post about it.
In the video about ensemble staging, I learned how setting the scene with multiple characters whether in the foreground or background and how they are facing really changes the dynamic of the scene. The narrator’s favorite scene of the discussed movie showed that there were 3 simultaneous stories, and we didn’t know the real one until the scene revealed the third story. This ensemble cast setting was phenomenal and added so much to the scene that could not have been with just 2 people talking. I was also really impressed with the video about movement and how much more interesting specific movement made scenes. I also liked how they compared all of these videos to Marvel films and how lazy their laziness with all of these elements. The music, the camera movement, the scene setting, it is just so commercialized and bland. I also really enjoyed the videos of Hitchcock explaining his process. Just how simple facial expressions, when adding a target can change the whole perception of the scene. really interesting thoughts when making films.
This week I had a lot of trouble with the video essay. I feel that my skills with video editing tools were challenged, and I did a terrible video essay. Alot of what I wanted to do was thwarted by technology or my ineptness with said technology. Here is my post about it. I am pretty embarrassed with how bad it is. I will try to boost my skills for the assignments next week.
So yeah overall, I really liked learning about the video techniques and watching the other cinematographers explain their process. I did not have as much fun with the essay, even though I loved analyzing the scene, it took away from my enjoyment because of how bad I failed. Anyway, I hope to do better next week.
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.
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.
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.
As sand through an hourglass, these are the days of our lives. I reread my ds106goals and thought about whether or not I am walking down that same road Reflections on ds Goals I am indeed and will keep plugging away to improve in all areas that we are asked to participate in. This class would be a great one to take by itself, if I had had that flexibility!
My two daily creates are a nod to nature. The school mascot was an inspiration for the first pun one and there is a certain poetry about the beach.
The most surprising thing about this week was watching the “Be Right Back” episode in the Black Mirror series. That was well written and acted. A couple of take aways are to keep my cell phone in the glove box and not to purchase a robot in the likeness of my spouse.
This week had less assignments but a lot of work. I love movies and I am very enthusiastic about movies, so was excited to see that this week was all about movies.
I did two daily creates. I tried to use some photoshop skills, even if the results were very silly.
I revisited my goals from the beginning of the semester. This made me realize I needed to be more thorough with my reflections.
I read articles and watched videos about film analysis. These gave me a good idea of what to look at during the next assignment.
The biggest hurdle was the video essay, which I made about Ex Machina. My methods were not the most effective, but I have a product that I am very proud of. I had two posts about this, which are the actual video and a reflection.
Overall I put a lot of effort into this week’s assignments and I think it paid off. Next week I am going to keep pushing myself.
This week based on sound and audio. I think this week was my favorite week so far. Getting to experiment with different types of audios was intriguing. I had no idea it was this complex when it came to creating my own sounds and audios.
Audacity
When I first downloaded Audacity and opened it for the first time it was very intimidating. There were so many buttons and controls to utilize. However, once I started messing around with the controls, I found it quite easy to use. It was fun using audacity to create my own sounds and audios for my assignments. I think my favorite assignment using audacity would have to be creating my own radio bumper. I definitely see myself using this application in the future and I recommend this to anyone who is a beginner looking to get into sound and audio work.
Moon Graffiti
This was an interesting audio to listen to. I liked how they used a real audio from a message in case the space mission was to go wrong. Thank goodness nothing did go wrong but still interesting to see they had an audio prerecorded and ready to use. The overall audio was a good listen and there never was a dull moment.
Radio Bumper
I really enjoyed creating my bumper. I love how much freedom we had when creating it. I felt like it really tested my creative and how creative could I get. I think the final product was one of my better works in this class and I hope to hear it in a DS106 radio.
DS106 Radio
This was my first time listening to a radio live and I have to say it was a great first-time experience. Using the discord to communicate with each other was very insightful. Hearing other thoughts and opinions on the radio as it played help me understand some things I didn’t understand.
Audio Assignments
All of the assignments I completed this week were really fun. It really tested how creative could I get with these. My favorite would probably be the sick beat assignment. I am a person who listens to music a lot so creating my own beat was something I could relate too. Also, it was just fun in general making my own beats. It did take some trial and error because some beats don’t mesh well with others but once I found the perfect ones it came out great.
Overall, this week was really good. I learned so much more about audio than I would have ever imaged. I definitely plan on using this knowledge in the future in this class and in life. See you next week!
This week was all about sound. As someone who has never edited audio before this was a challenge akin to climbing Mt. Everest, but I managed to figure it out! While my work is by no means astounding, I am very proud of what I did.
To get me into the sound mood, I listened to Moon Graffiti by Jonathan Mitchell. It was really interesting and got me more excited about experimenting with sound. My full review is here.
First, I downloaded Audacity. That is the platform where I edited all of my assignments. The first assignment I did was arguably the hardest: the radio bumper. I was very ambitious when I started this and ended up having to swallow my pride and aim a bit lower. My bumper is here.
Next I did the Create A Place assignment. This was less stressful and allowed me to think about what I actually heard every day and what would make a landscape feel full and real. The sound is here.
Then, with the assistance of my friends, I did the story and conversation assignments. My friends helped with sound effects for the story assignment, as I could not get some specific clips. We had a lot of fun. They also helped by asking the questions for my edited conversation with Dr. Oblivion.
I then tried to create some radio show ideas. The ideas were alright but need a little more work.
I also watched two videos on radio. They were very informative. I haven’t listened to a lot of radio so did not know much about its purpose. My thoughts are here.
Overall this week tested my limits and pushed me out of my comfort zone. I was very stressed while working but enjoyed it when I started working with other people.
I was instantly overwhelmed by the audio assignments listed for this week. So, I broke it down to just one assignment at a time and tried not to look at it as a whole. Here is the first assignment I finished.
The next assignment I finished was spooky dialogue. I had fun playing with stretching words or speeding them up. In the end I learned a few things and made something haunting.
On Friday I went to Target and bought headphones and a microphone to finish my work. Good decision, it made getting the final edits and bit of work done easier.
All right I am down to the wire ad I just posted my last assignment. I started it earlier in the week and knew exactly what I wanted it to sound like. I think I pulled it off.
Last week, I noted that I was worried about this week’s assignments, as I haven’t had much experience with Audacity or editing audio, and it seemed like a big workload. However, I enjoyed every assignment this week and learning more about audio storytelling and how sound can affect so much of any form of media, from movies to radio stories.
Setting up Audacity and SoundCloud wasn’t a big issue. I already had Audacity installed for some other school projects and I made a new SoundCloud for DS106 purposes. The hard part was getting into a mindset of expressing myself with just audio, rather than the usual visual tools that we’re so accustomed to.
The Moon Graffiti story was the first experience I had really honing in on the auditory storytelling elements. The moon landing was a great premise, and the entire story made me feel some sort of existential dread, so I wrote about it in my reflection post.
Next I created my DS106 radio bumper. This wasn’t anything special, I made a pretty generic bumper that framed DS106 in a positive light. However, the recording process actually took multiple tries because I kept tripping over my words and not getting specific enunciation I wanted. I was satisfied with the final product, but boy was it frustrating while I was recording.
The DS106 live listening session was a blast. I tuned into the Wednesday broadcast after work and I didn’t expect to get so into the stories and the audio elements that enhanced my experience. Talking in the Discord chat along with Professor Bond and other classmates gave me more perspective on how sound effects and timing of music can really elevate a story.
The Sound Effect Story was something I had to go back and edit. Initially I made a spooky story through my own will, but after looking at the assignment bank, I realized that the spooky story was another assignment entirely. So I used the spooky story as one of my 3 assignments for the week and created a car crash story for the specific Sound Effect Story assignment.
The three other audio assignments I did for the week are:
Spooky story (as I mentioned before) Dr. Oblivion leaving a voicemail Asking Dr. Oblivion about AI taking over jobs and recording a conversation with him
I had a hard time fitting my specific course character into my assignments, so I ended up relying on a lot of Dr. Oblivion content to get my stuff done for the week. I’m hoping to look up some tools that can be used to create a voice for my specific character soon.
Next are my daily creates for this week. I added text over a plane banner, made a poem about lemons without the use of the most common words associated with lemons, and took a secret hideout out of a video game and put some meaning behind it.
For my radio show ideas, I couldn’t think of anything specific since we don’t have our assigned team members yet, but I was visualizing a story that our team could make that incorporates all of the characters in one way or another, just like those in the DS106 radio broadcasts this week. I also talked about my experiences with podcasts and shows, particularly about how I’m an avid tennis podcast listener and the shift in mindset I’ll need for DS106.
That’s all for week 4! Crazy how time is flying by, we’re 1/4th of the way through the semester. Even through my copious amounts of procrastination and laziness, I really do enjoy this class and it’s one of the highlights of my week. I’m looking forward to what this next 2 weeks will bring; looks like we’re becoming filmmakers!
I decided to go back and give you a summary of week one.
We got snow week one. 1st day of classes was canceled. My kids had snow days! yay so fun. I had just moved back home after not being able to live in my house for over 6 months due to a water leak. I got food poisoning on Wednesday (I think it has been a bit). I found videos on how to use WordPress and got my blog up. With the kids not having school, moving back home, and me being unwell was a perfect storm for my husband to have extra problems associated with his PTSD. It was a rough way to start classes. I knew me starting school would be difficult for him to handle. While he tries to be supportive, he needs help daily. I now take care of him. We are working with the VA on stuff.
At first, I wanted to keep all this on the downlow. Because I do not want anyone to feel sorry for me. I have a lot going on. But as we enter week 4, I realize how much this is going to come up in my work as an artist. My story doesn’t need to be a sad one. My story is what I make it not what people assign it to be. Yes, Week one was a shit show, but I managed to get my blog up with colors and organize it. This is my origin story not my story of defeat. Things are just beginning in a new way.
My assignment to watch a movie was fun. Since I have children, I was like I am going to watch a grown-up movie. I had attempted to watch Blade Runner several times in my life. This was my chance It is required for school. Here is my review.
: – According to Greta (gretahammen.com)