Month: August 2015

Sometimes you go back to things…Fairytale to Video

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Sometimes you go back to things you started but never finished.

I had left this just sitting on my hard drive from a few weeks ago. It seems this summer I am doing assignments, but ones I create myself instead of straight from the assignment bank. This started as Writing during the Bugeron106 Fairy Tale Festival. After going through writing – I pushed and did an audio reading of it so that I used my voice – something I was hesitant in doing. I moved on somewhat and created a PDF file of the writing with some pics to include in a FlipBook tool exploration. I still was trying to figure out how to used it in video and not just a slide show and had started playing around in iMovie with it. The drawback was not enough created art pieces to go with the story to hold it together so it was mostly an audio book. I left it and went on to new things.

Then I get mentioned in a tweet by @mdvfunes to @cogdog if my soundcloud version would help him in his K12 Keynote information collection. I had pondered how to help him out – but haven’t been able to condense my thoughts into something understandable and video.

The fairy tale is 11 minutes – longer than the 3 minutes that was requested, being another reason. I still have to think about if I can pull it off and if it would be helpful. Still pondering.

So as I was having my morning caffeine – I pulled up the video I started on the fairy tale. I am not sure if it is just time passing or because it is too dang hot outside today to want to do anything but sit still and keep cool – but I started to watch it and it didn’t seem as awful as I remembered leaving it.

So I looked at  a few options, added some titles and cleaned up some bumps. I used some Bitmoji avatar pics to stay with the storybook feel. I was surprised at how many can fit.

It is still 11 minutes plus and I don’t have all my attributions added yet. There are only a few – but they need to be added. Not sure it is anything Alan can use either, but will pass it on. It did feel good to take something that was left in the dust and at least polish it up a bit and have it in a form to share whether it is as something to learn from. The previous state was just a mess of files  – at least now it is connected.

I am getting to like iMovie a bit more. I can use it on my laptop or desktop so it allows me to be near family or in different rooms which is a perk. FinalCutPro means I am held in the office room. With this I found I could use some of the trailer templates and convert to a movie. The trailer templates are more polished and featured than the movie themes and it is nice to start with a base to edit from and not totally from scratch.

One thing which would be really nice is if iMovie Storyboard was somehow usable and a tool in iMoive for any movie. How great to improve planning and writing skills if it was possible to lay it out in a storyboard that converted it to the video like the trailer templates – but allowed you to be the director and decide what features and how long and what order. Is there such an option? Still looking – let me know if there is!

and here it is – A Story of Connections: DS106 and the Ed Administrator. Thanks to the Fairy Godfather – Alan Levine and the ds106 Guardian Angel – Mariana Funes, along with all the people and characters who are #4Life and continue to support and create.

Open sharing and connections are the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. They are the everyday simple acts of kindness and reaching out that together make wealth in life. Sometimes they become the awesome out of this world-never thought it could happen events, but mostly it is the true enrichment of the small touches that together add up. 

Give one – get many.
Open and share – you will never regret that you did.
🙂

and how appropriate – with auto upload from iMovie you can’t define your thumbnail cover – it automatically chose @NanaLou-  perfect!

Odd Week but reflection shows results in #106 Villages

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I haven’t been consistent with weekly summaries. Many of the #ds106 “advice” posts are to start the summary early in the week and add to it instead of waiting until the last day. VERY GOOD ADVICE!

Giving it a go this week….and when done realized I had a productive week even though while going through it I felt like I had slacked.

I seem to have hit a plateau this week or maybe just falling into a realistic pace. I have spent some long hours on things the last few weeks because I could. This week has fewer leisure hours for some reason so not as intense of attack. I also seem to be hitting the midstream wall and content is not coming to me without lots of effort and thought.

Prisoner106 group kinda helped with that – seems the new new new new No. 2 is missing. Talky Tina jumped in and set some things up. From comments of many members – heading into August is a busy time and their time may be shortening as well. Radio week has some effort – not sure the constellations are totally in line – but ds106 surprises so it may fall into place or morph into something else.

This week in review:

Daily Creates: Getting back in the groove of doing the daily creates. They are a great activity and really do keep you sharp and thinking. I have slacked on them with doing more intense projects – so it is good to get back to them

Cowerful Dreams tdc1297

Cowlerful Dreams

Chicken tdc1295

Why did the Chicken cross the road?

and then views through a cutout….. tdc1298

Garden Cut Out

Butterfly Cutout

A challenge from RonaldL and John Johnston on creating a BCingU Gif..

I created a GIF while in my bungalow and waiting for a weekly message from No. 2.

Chicken GIF

Burgeron106 is looking at Native American fairytale and focusing on Animated GIFs – so reading and creating.

Heron and Hummingbird GIFs

Video week in Prisoner106 was a time sucker – I easily forgot how long things take – but I was determined to come up with a result even though I still can’t get totally onboard with the nuances of the story. Iron Maiden saved this week for me. I even have the music on my playlist for exercise time. 🙂 Here is my result of the creation process.

Wearing down to becoming Village Resident

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A rather odd week it seems. Several independent things all together just making it odd. Or maybe it is settling into balance #4life by remembering to look up and see what else is going on and other creation possibilities not necessarily tied to No. 6 or tales of fairies.

Video  – a time for definite skill building.

I am starting to enjoy watching the Prisoner episodes – but in no way am I putting it together or carrying story lines from one episode to another. I was not diligent in watching them in order or making sure I finished one before the next either. I did find some episodes uploaded that are in 15 min segments. That has helped in watching. Don’t ask me why – maybe the shrink on the couch can tell me – but watching 4 – 15 minute episodes seems doable when I can’t commit to one 50 min clip. Same amount of time – but different. But it did seem that I am wearing down and becoming okay with being a resident. I think finding the tele-porter and getting back to Bovine might be necessary to stay free.

Which leads to trying to do a video without an idea. I did look through the assignment bank and probably should have stuck to a more direct route. I ended up combing several different strands of assignments and it became one project instead of several smaller ones.

What did inspire me was the music by Iron Maiden. I really like the song and the guitar sequences. It lead me to listening to more of the band’s music this week. During their height of fame I was a country girl listening to Steve Earle, Alan Jackson, the Judds and others. I seemed to miss the heavy metal era.

  • The project started with the song. I wanted to expand past the assignment of just creating a music video. So I used Mac Downloader and captured the song from YouTube.
  • I imported into Audacity
  • Found dialog clips from the Prisoner series at Http://www.moviesoundclips.com and imported them into layers in Audacity
  • I loved @iamTalkyTina ‘s interpretive reading of the opening dialog of the series and downloaded it from the prisoner106 archive.
  • I then worked on the sound file to blend with the music and somewhat tell a story (of a story I can’t figure out)
  • Sound complete

Then it was time to move to video. I want to get back to FinalCutPro because of the ability to really put your own stamp on it. As discussed in the visual week in creating book covers – wanting to start from scratch not edit.

I assembled my “bins” and imported into sequences – all the first organizing for FCP was set. As I started finding the razor blade for cutting etc came back quickly. THEN IT HIT ME! UGH! Rendering is necessary when working in FCP Every time something is added or moved. So using several different clips turned into a 40 minute rendering wait with the first clip. I had no patience for it on that day.

I kept it in the background, but opened iMovie.

  • Choose NO theme
  • imported into library clips, GIFS, stills and audio.

The next wall – iMoive accepted the GIFS, but creates them as a still image of one. To use the GIFs  as video or animated, I would need to covert them all from GIF to video in another program and then re-import. If someone knows the secret to making GIFs run in iMovie please let me know!

I wasn’t really sure which GIFs would actually fit where I might be going with the audio (remember – I said writing and storyboarding first is a lesson learned!) so spending a good chunk of time on converting hit the floor real fast.

I focused on using the clips I found, some stills I had – and now realize I had more that I could have/should have used. It was becoming the project that just needed to get done. Too much invested to leave it unfinished, but not quite compelling enough to turn into losing track of time into wee hours of the night without realizing.

iMovie was working for the most part. As with making art – lots of futzing. moving things and lining things up that most viewers will never even realize. I went back in and added Ken Burns effects to change some focus in hopes it wouldn’t be as noticiable that the video was not the dialog you were hearing. Towards the end I did clip the video and No. 6 seems to have a little tic or jerk as he says he is still himself – I actually liked that and had it repeated a few times as part of the story – so yes it was intended.

Towards the completion it still needed more since I didn’t have much original art included-  so I added title segments in some portions to focus on the dialog. It was like an aha – titles don’t just have to be at the beginning- and I didn’t have to go into a photo editor and make stills with text. The one slip was not having the Village font available in iMovie- and by this time I just could not think of figuring out how to get it installed and available to the program. Not for fear of doing a font install – but the uncertainty of iMovie in the way it saves automatically. After so many hours to get to this point I didn’t want it all to be lost of messed up and have to re-establish it all again. So yes – took the easy way out on this one.

So – still need to work on video skills and more practice to get comfortable and to use features that make sense. I will take this for the units this week.

I am glad I finished it and am okay with the result. I did learn while working on it. I am ready to do video again – but with a story that I may have more internalized.

 

 

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