Two weeks ago must be years ago, at least it feels like this after intensivley producing video for 2 weeks. Although I've already taken a course about producing video, it was all so new with the ds106 assignments I've chosen. I already knew about making clips and editing them to something, but I didn't know anything about searching movies and other materials and make something new, and I did not know about being creative with this. The mentioned course just taught about producing interviews and reports with a certain content and to use certain technology, which I anyway have not available for my private production.
Browsing through the ds106 video assignment bank, I loved reading about producing funny or personal videos like, "Exercise the awesome power of MS Paint to create a music video!" or "Make a video that represents who you are."
In addition to this I now know even more about video producing technology, like how to record your screen or how to download youtube videos, and after this third video week I'm far more experienced in video editing. I feel as if I can nearly take any editing challange now. Still, I presume if I don't proceed in editing video I may forget much of what I've done this 2 weeks. I realized that this could be when I used sometimes audacity to eidt my video sound and did not know any more how to do this as qualified as during the audio assignments of this course.
The following is a list of the posts of the assignments I chose from the assignment bank for the video weeks 10, 11 and 12:
Harmonium Love: A modern movie turned int o a silent movie http://stefaniejeskestory.blogspot.com/2013/04/harmonium-love.html
Troll Beauty: 5 seconds from 5 clips about trolls
http://stefaniejeskestory.blogspot.com/2013/04/troll-beauty.html
Delusion: Ambiance for a poem.
http://stefaniejeskestory.blogspot.com/2013/04/delusion-video-peom.html
The Lion and Me: Foley added to a silent film
http://stefaniejeskestory.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-lion-and-me.html
Interactive Spiderwick: An essaylike comment on a vidoe game.
http://stefaniejeskestory.blogspot.com/2013/04/interactive-spiderwick.html
Actually I am amazed by this list but also confused about if really it was me who produced them. I feel like a stranger in my own realm.
I also now watch movies in a different way, which has become stranger, too. I guess it is the nature and amount of information which now reaches my awareness. This surely can be scary.
Showing posts with label weeklysummary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label weeklysummary. Show all posts
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Sunday, February 17, 2013
I am Visual now
Summary of week 5
This week was fun and I may have done more than students were expected to do, not from the amount of creations but from the amount of time I spend on any.
This is a good cue to write about 7 Gifs around the Spiderwick movie. This is motivated by the ds106 assignment bank titled Summarize a movie with Animated GIFs, which I did here.
I consider this the most beautiful thing I did the week, but I know I got a lot of credit from the makers of the movie. The pictures already existed and I just had to arrange them in my way, which gave me some new experience in the area of story telling and I enjoyed being with the beautiful images for a long time.
Also inspired by the assignment bank was dividing a photograph in several frames and arranging them in a new way. The result I named Winter Kids. This task not only made me thought about visual problems but also about what advantage it is in winter when you are a child.
I did a third assignment bank create, which was required for week 5: Valentine’s Day Caption Challenge. Here is what I have made of it.
To continue here is my post about the photoblitzing, which meant to take 14 photographs of 14 different and given content in 20 minutes.
Doing the photos was a bit of stress for me, but I liked looking at the photoblitzing photopool on flickr and had some good experience when giving comments and getting comments myself.
On flickr I set up a set, which includes photos of mine which I like in particular. According to this set I designed another blog post named Great Moments in Time.
Really demanding was the idea to work through a slideshow which includes advice to make better photographs and to choose some of the guidance to use it for future photographs. In my post so much to learn about photography you will find a link to the slideshow and information how this task worked out for me.
Last but not least I find some peace from very demanding weeklycreates in the dailycreates. The results I summarized in the blog post Peace.
Mostly this week I have learned that I have to learn so much more. I still feel unsure about how to make good photographs or how to edit images or make good compositions from images. However I have become a great deal more skilled this week and I may have enough time to improve to a certain level. My ideas are faster then my learning. Maybe in future it is a good idea to do more demanding visual design together with friends. What could that be?
This week was fun and I may have done more than students were expected to do, not from the amount of creations but from the amount of time I spend on any.
This is a good cue to write about 7 Gifs around the Spiderwick movie. This is motivated by the ds106 assignment bank titled Summarize a movie with Animated GIFs, which I did here.
I consider this the most beautiful thing I did the week, but I know I got a lot of credit from the makers of the movie. The pictures already existed and I just had to arrange them in my way, which gave me some new experience in the area of story telling and I enjoyed being with the beautiful images for a long time.
Also inspired by the assignment bank was dividing a photograph in several frames and arranging them in a new way. The result I named Winter Kids. This task not only made me thought about visual problems but also about what advantage it is in winter when you are a child.
I did a third assignment bank create, which was required for week 5: Valentine’s Day Caption Challenge. Here is what I have made of it.
To continue here is my post about the photoblitzing, which meant to take 14 photographs of 14 different and given content in 20 minutes.
Doing the photos was a bit of stress for me, but I liked looking at the photoblitzing photopool on flickr and had some good experience when giving comments and getting comments myself.
On flickr I set up a set, which includes photos of mine which I like in particular. According to this set I designed another blog post named Great Moments in Time.
Really demanding was the idea to work through a slideshow which includes advice to make better photographs and to choose some of the guidance to use it for future photographs. In my post so much to learn about photography you will find a link to the slideshow and information how this task worked out for me.
Last but not least I find some peace from very demanding weeklycreates in the dailycreates. The results I summarized in the blog post Peace.
Mostly this week I have learned that I have to learn so much more. I still feel unsure about how to make good photographs or how to edit images or make good compositions from images. However I have become a great deal more skilled this week and I may have enough time to improve to a certain level. My ideas are faster then my learning. Maybe in future it is a good idea to do more demanding visual design together with friends. What could that be?
Saturday, February 9, 2013
Audio Week
Summary of week 4
This was the fourth week with ds106 and all about audio. I think the hardest part was to listen to so many radio broadcasts. I am not a native speaker in English and when there is no visual information it becomes more difficult to follow a plot. Further more all listening activities did turn out as exploring American culture. What is natural to an American was so far away to me. The audio stories often include political issues like election or gun-control laws which are popular topics in the USA right now. Actually I am not very interested in German politics, either.
I listened to the following stories:
The Truth “Movies for your ears"
This stories are created mostly by good voice acting with some music in the background to support the atmosphere. In The Modern Prometheus for example I realised clearly that with voice and music the end was created to be a relaxed atmosphere. Naturally there have been in all three stories sound to support the action of the story, which were for example steps, opening doors, shots.
I also listened to so called detective stories.
I was impressed by the making of these stories. The audio was throughout dense and interesting. Sometimes two people told the same story. The reporter, who is reporting about the story and the person who was interviewed were given in turns and into one another.
I presume for Americans names like Ira Glass and Jad Abumrad are popular, too, but not for me. Although this doesn't matter when trying to understand what they have to say.
The Ira Glass videos taught me that a radio story is a sequence of smaller events and that it is important to keep the attention of the listener step by step. He also recommends to clean up what you have collected for a story, so that only the most important material is used. He becomes radical when he calls this process killing of some of the resources. I actually got a bit of a fright here.
Jad Abumrad beautifully explains that there is a connection between broadcaster and listener and that a radio story is all about this connection, which evokes pictures in the mind of the listener. I know this collective experience from childhood memories, when someone told a story or I told one. Concerning movies the visual part is set, but if there is just audio people have to make their own images together. I like this idea.
Unfortunately I was not able to follow any live broadcast of ds106 radio. I would have liked to know in advance when there will be a live broadcast, which maybe is complicated to achieve. Yet, I listened to some music on ds106 radio and I also listened to the recording of the ds106 show, which happened via ds106 radio this time and learned more about Amber and Nancy the most magnificent students of Alan Levine. There was also some talk about ds106 radio, which was very technical and difficult to follow.
Which was really fun was doing the two weekly audio assignments. First I created the bumper, which is intended to be a piece played when there is a change in the broadcast. I recorded my voice and found a nice piece of music and in audacity laid it on top of each other. I also applied some of the effects to the voice, which was experimental so that I can not remember details.
It was a striking experience to work with my own voice and listen to it carefully. (The same with a video I made for a daily create, I will talk later about this.) I felt as if I had a closer look to myself the first time in my life and I liked what I realised about me, although it was not perfect at all.
The second weekly audio assignment was to create an audio piece made only from sound effects. It felt good to composite and to listen carefully to the sounds as I did in the past when I played instruments like the flute and the piano. I suddenly knew how much I miss these activities around music, yet, my new place does not allow any playing of musical instruments.
_________________________________________________________________________________
One of my daily creates has been a video where I re-enact one of my favourite movie scenes. This is a part in Inkheart, where Meggy meets Dustfinger first in the movie. I already mentioned that I had to have a close look on myself during this assignment which was interesting and rewarding. In addition it was difficult to reduce the original scene to my possibilities without making the scene a joke.
I also hummed my first audio memory, although I do not really know if this is my very first memory and I did not hum it, for my microphone was not able to record any humming, so I sang lalala.
Just today I completed another dailycreate and took a beautiful photograph of a pattern I have arranged on my desk.
All in all this week started out difficult but interesting and became a week with a happy end. I like being challenged by the ds106 assignments which I am not so much in my occupation as a media assistant.
This was the fourth week with ds106 and all about audio. I think the hardest part was to listen to so many radio broadcasts. I am not a native speaker in English and when there is no visual information it becomes more difficult to follow a plot. Further more all listening activities did turn out as exploring American culture. What is natural to an American was so far away to me. The audio stories often include political issues like election or gun-control laws which are popular topics in the USA right now. Actually I am not very interested in German politics, either.
I listened to the following stories:
The Truth “Movies for your ears"
This stories are created mostly by good voice acting with some music in the background to support the atmosphere. In The Modern Prometheus for example I realised clearly that with voice and music the end was created to be a relaxed atmosphere. Naturally there have been in all three stories sound to support the action of the story, which were for example steps, opening doors, shots.
I also listened to so called detective stories.
I was impressed by the making of these stories. The audio was throughout dense and interesting. Sometimes two people told the same story. The reporter, who is reporting about the story and the person who was interviewed were given in turns and into one another.
I presume for Americans names like Ira Glass and Jad Abumrad are popular, too, but not for me. Although this doesn't matter when trying to understand what they have to say.
The Ira Glass videos taught me that a radio story is a sequence of smaller events and that it is important to keep the attention of the listener step by step. He also recommends to clean up what you have collected for a story, so that only the most important material is used. He becomes radical when he calls this process killing of some of the resources. I actually got a bit of a fright here.
Jad Abumrad beautifully explains that there is a connection between broadcaster and listener and that a radio story is all about this connection, which evokes pictures in the mind of the listener. I know this collective experience from childhood memories, when someone told a story or I told one. Concerning movies the visual part is set, but if there is just audio people have to make their own images together. I like this idea.
Unfortunately I was not able to follow any live broadcast of ds106 radio. I would have liked to know in advance when there will be a live broadcast, which maybe is complicated to achieve. Yet, I listened to some music on ds106 radio and I also listened to the recording of the ds106 show, which happened via ds106 radio this time and learned more about Amber and Nancy the most magnificent students of Alan Levine. There was also some talk about ds106 radio, which was very technical and difficult to follow.
Which was really fun was doing the two weekly audio assignments. First I created the bumper, which is intended to be a piece played when there is a change in the broadcast. I recorded my voice and found a nice piece of music and in audacity laid it on top of each other. I also applied some of the effects to the voice, which was experimental so that I can not remember details.
It was a striking experience to work with my own voice and listen to it carefully. (The same with a video I made for a daily create, I will talk later about this.) I felt as if I had a closer look to myself the first time in my life and I liked what I realised about me, although it was not perfect at all.
The second weekly audio assignment was to create an audio piece made only from sound effects. It felt good to composite and to listen carefully to the sounds as I did in the past when I played instruments like the flute and the piano. I suddenly knew how much I miss these activities around music, yet, my new place does not allow any playing of musical instruments.
_________________________________________________________________________________
One of my daily creates has been a video where I re-enact one of my favourite movie scenes. This is a part in Inkheart, where Meggy meets Dustfinger first in the movie. I already mentioned that I had to have a close look on myself during this assignment which was interesting and rewarding. In addition it was difficult to reduce the original scene to my possibilities without making the scene a joke.
I also hummed my first audio memory, although I do not really know if this is my very first memory and I did not hum it, for my microphone was not able to record any humming, so I sang lalala.
Just today I completed another dailycreate and took a beautiful photograph of a pattern I have arranged on my desk.
All in all this week started out difficult but interesting and became a week with a happy end. I like being challenged by the ds106 assignments which I am not so much in my occupation as a media assistant.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Impressive Workload
Summary of week 3
I have started the week with making out what storytelling is to me. After this I have learned even more about storytelling, while having some practice and listen to others about their thoughts around storytelling, when I watched the ds106 Show. I wondered about how deep storytellers are going into their work when they become their hero of the story, which actually scares me a bit. I think I don't like loosing myself in stories, which is part of the story of my life. I have started having my main occupation within in the area of technology and natural science but shifted to become an artist while starting to study the liberal arts. What contrast! I wondered about the attitude of artists a lot and did not get along with them very well. Now it is often the other way around, especially when meeting engineers, who are often dull and arrogant in their rational attitude. Yet, I still do not dare becoming one of those who are vanishing a kind of in their creative activities. Which leads me to another point of this week's ds106 class.
What was really difficult for me this week is creating on demand. I am more used to take my time when creating art and design. Yet I wanted to keep up with the regular students of ds106 and decided to do what they are obliged to do. In the end I did some good artwork but feel as if I am a kind of factory worker.
There were 3 dailycreates I have chosen:
First I made a blue screen with a death message on it. After reviewing the work of other students, which was funny and scary, I was not so sure any more if I really have understood the task. Maybe death is different to me and has to do with silence and even birth, which is why I thought it funny of me using a star in my message like for birth dates, but not a cross like for death dates.
BlueScreenDailycreate
I also made a drawing about an invention, which is an umbrella for three people. I realized that this may mean protection to me but was not so happy with the fact that the umbrella is carried by a man who reminds me of the dream papa of infants. I even pictured a whole dream family, father-mother-child. This will give me some thoughts.
Next I wrote about my biggest fear. I did not really know which this is, but chose to have a big audience is frightening for me, especially concerning the feeling envy.
Envy
My biggest fear is having a considerable audience.
The story to overcome this may be a further invention like a coat which protects me from realising people's feelings too much and the same coat would protect me from realising my own feelings too much. This coat has an extra thick layer of material which keeps away envy from the people outside and from realising my own envy from the inside. The coat is able to communicate with me and tells me when he encloses me firmer for protection and when he opens up for communication and relationship if the situation is appropriate. So the coat is my friend I would call him or her Eagle for she would realize the danger of I becoming hurt with her beautiful blue and sharply outlined eyes very early and she would dive to rescue me from what ever is able of making me vanish in a cloud of unfortunate communication considering my creations.
The story to overcome this may be a further invention like a coat which protects me from realising people's feelings too much and the same coat would protect me from realising my own feelings too much. This coat has an extra thick layer of material which keeps away envy from the people outside and from realising my own envy from the inside. The coat is able to communicate with me and tells me when he encloses me firmer for protection and when he opens up for communication and relationship if the situation is appropriate. So the coat is my friend I would call him or her Eagle for she would realize the danger of I becoming hurt with her beautiful blue and sharply outlined eyes very early and she would dive to rescue me from what ever is able of making me vanish in a cloud of unfortunate communication considering my creations.
I was very fond of the part of the task who asked students to invent a story to overcome their fear. What I wondered about is, that the fear of some is so deep that they not can think out a story to overcome it. Often they know their fear is a story by calling it irrational, yet, they can not go into the story world and try to get rid of their fear.
One could think this may be enough for one week, but no, there were many more tasks to do.
Having watched a video Kurt Vonnegut and the Shape of Stories, I analysed a little story for children.
I found this interesting but was not declined to do too much work on this. I was deeply impressed when I saw other students did different. I am not sure if I should embed links to the work I mean here. They may feel observed and pushed into public.
However, for the following example I had to refer to some links, for it was part of the task. I took artwork of ds106 students from the past and reflected what this stories mean to me and my approach to storytelling. Appreciating Past DS106 Stories
There was also a weekly creation to do: Telling Stories with Photos
I chose a series of photographs I did to find out about iso and white balance. I realized when setting them in a row that it seems as if one awakes and tries to find out where she is and what is on. First a hardly noticeable shadowy appearance of something, then a spot out of the window which becomes clearer and colored.
I know that regular students of Alan Levine were urged to commend on other students work and really, I was happy to be able to skip this. I love looking at the artwork of fellow students, but I have had so bad experience concerning comments. Either they make me feel misunderstood or the others feel misunderstood in what they've tried to convey with their artwork when I comment. In my past sometimes they even insult me personally and tried to reduce me by saying it is not worth of taking my creation seriously. Thus "Once bitten, twice shy."
My overall view of this week is that it is fun participating in ds106. Yet it also is time consuming and I feel as if do not want to become too much devoted on keeping up with what is demanded. The greater target of ds106 is teaching about storytelling, but he creations themselves may not lead to a greater production like a series of something or a more extensive piece of video or animation, which would be nice for me.
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Initiation
Summary of week 2
This week I started with reading the "weekly stuff to do checklist" page which is designed for the UMW students of Alan Levine. I read through the week 2 page and sorted what I may do as an open online participant and what not and I definitely decided to do an animated gif. I also thought a welcome page, which leads to my various links, is a great idea. In addition for some reflection I again will have a weekly summary.
I started with creating the welcome page, which was OK and successful. I just asked myself if it is good to bother a person, I may send the link to, with choices or rather give them a direct link to a certain page.
I also started sorting my posts via tags, which you can find on the right side of the blog posts. These tags are working as categories the reader can choose from. Now anyone can click there to get for example all posts which are photographs. I like this.
Do not ask me about the animated gif. I do not really know what I did. I worked through loads of information about how to create it and was happy when it finally came to use Gimp, which I know well. However, it was fascinating to create this particular gif and I felt good that I managed the challenge and about my new achievement.
Over this I just was able to do two of the dailycreate assignments which include a photograph about what I can not miss during a day and a sentence about the sky.
Which is really important to me is the possibility to be able to see what my fellow students are creating and realising again and again how different the approaches to a task are and all quite beautiful.
With this week full of fun and challenge and enrichment by my fellow students I am excited to continue the course.
This week I started with reading the "weekly stuff to do checklist" page which is designed for the UMW students of Alan Levine. I read through the week 2 page and sorted what I may do as an open online participant and what not and I definitely decided to do an animated gif. I also thought a welcome page, which leads to my various links, is a great idea. In addition for some reflection I again will have a weekly summary.
I started with creating the welcome page, which was OK and successful. I just asked myself if it is good to bother a person, I may send the link to, with choices or rather give them a direct link to a certain page.
I also started sorting my posts via tags, which you can find on the right side of the blog posts. These tags are working as categories the reader can choose from. Now anyone can click there to get for example all posts which are photographs. I like this.
Do not ask me about the animated gif. I do not really know what I did. I worked through loads of information about how to create it and was happy when it finally came to use Gimp, which I know well. However, it was fascinating to create this particular gif and I felt good that I managed the challenge and about my new achievement.
Over this I just was able to do two of the dailycreate assignments which include a photograph about what I can not miss during a day and a sentence about the sky.
Which is really important to me is the possibility to be able to see what my fellow students are creating and realising again and again how different the approaches to a task are and all quite beautiful.
With this week full of fun and challenge and enrichment by my fellow students I am excited to continue the course.
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Entrance
Summary of week 1
This is about the weekly summary which regular students of ds106 http://ds106.us/ are obliged to do to gain some grading. As an open participant I am not, yet, may decide it is not just useful for grading issues but to get out most of the great opportunity I am given here for free.
My motivation to participate to this open online digital storytelling course is a keen interest in all about media and art. As an artist without any degree I always feel I have to learn more, because all the guys with a degree know so much more than I do, at leas they have a kind of insider knowledge I wouldn't have. I hope I may gain some of this hidden knowledge here.
Alan Levine http://cogdogblog.com/ as the instructor of Digital Storytelling provided material for the first week, which should be reflected on. I am most occupied with the "Ten rules for students and teachers from John Cage" (Why not "by John Cage?").
I think they are great in this context where students and teachers have to communicate in a certain way. Then again I know John Cage as a person who loved making rules, even to produce art, and often advised other to follow these rules. I don't know anything about in which way he dealed with given rules. How to make knew rules when following the old ones?
I was pretty impressed by the TEDxPhoenix talk with Kelli Anderson about “Disruptive Wonder”
However, I did not find out what the "Disruptive Wonder" means. Maybe this is a language issue (I am a German native speaker). The last project the video introduces is about a newspaper with positive coverage and advertisements which may appear in the future (buying a wind turbine with domestic dimensions). Maybe to some people this feels disruptive. I personally already live in a world like this, at least in my inside, which by the way often feels disruptive to the people around me. I guess it is a kind of visionary thinking some people do not feel comfortable with.
The video about ideas (Stephen Johnson on Where Ideas Come From) I already knew but I interpreted it new in the storytelling context. It is quite interesting how the little drawings one connected to the other. This illustrates one message of the video that is to say that ideas are connected via people/ teams/ institutions and history (time).
Last but not least there was the video on what art is with Robert Hughes what art is with Robert Hughes. I think you have to see it historically in any way. War is a horrible experience. The negative reaction to this in the world of art I would not condemn. Then again I can understand Robert Hughes critique in his time. People needed something positive to go on and had to let heal the wounds after they have nursed them thoroughly.
I really had fun with this weeks ds106. I loved the dailycreate option as an inspiration but I know I should keep track of my own ideas, too. I had a conversation with an instructor about technical issues and this is new to me in MOOC's, which are usually far more impersonal. It was troubling to set up all these pages, but this may serve me well in the future. I love watching that my blog was visited not just by me but by others as well, which is an effect of the ds106 organisation. All in all "THANK YOU DS106" :)
This is about the weekly summary which regular students of ds106 http://ds106.us/ are obliged to do to gain some grading. As an open participant I am not, yet, may decide it is not just useful for grading issues but to get out most of the great opportunity I am given here for free.
My motivation to participate to this open online digital storytelling course is a keen interest in all about media and art. As an artist without any degree I always feel I have to learn more, because all the guys with a degree know so much more than I do, at leas they have a kind of insider knowledge I wouldn't have. I hope I may gain some of this hidden knowledge here.
Alan Levine http://cogdogblog.com/ as the instructor of Digital Storytelling provided material for the first week, which should be reflected on. I am most occupied with the "Ten rules for students and teachers from John Cage" (Why not "by John Cage?").
I think they are great in this context where students and teachers have to communicate in a certain way. Then again I know John Cage as a person who loved making rules, even to produce art, and often advised other to follow these rules. I don't know anything about in which way he dealed with given rules. How to make knew rules when following the old ones?
I was pretty impressed by the TEDxPhoenix talk with Kelli Anderson about “Disruptive Wonder”
However, I did not find out what the "Disruptive Wonder" means. Maybe this is a language issue (I am a German native speaker). The last project the video introduces is about a newspaper with positive coverage and advertisements which may appear in the future (buying a wind turbine with domestic dimensions). Maybe to some people this feels disruptive. I personally already live in a world like this, at least in my inside, which by the way often feels disruptive to the people around me. I guess it is a kind of visionary thinking some people do not feel comfortable with.
The video about ideas (Stephen Johnson on Where Ideas Come From) I already knew but I interpreted it new in the storytelling context. It is quite interesting how the little drawings one connected to the other. This illustrates one message of the video that is to say that ideas are connected via people/ teams/ institutions and history (time).
Last but not least there was the video on what art is with Robert Hughes what art is with Robert Hughes. I think you have to see it historically in any way. War is a horrible experience. The negative reaction to this in the world of art I would not condemn. Then again I can understand Robert Hughes critique in his time. People needed something positive to go on and had to let heal the wounds after they have nursed them thoroughly.
I really had fun with this weeks ds106. I loved the dailycreate option as an inspiration but I know I should keep track of my own ideas, too. I had a conversation with an instructor about technical issues and this is new to me in MOOC's, which are usually far more impersonal. It was troubling to set up all these pages, but this may serve me well in the future. I love watching that my blog was visited not just by me but by others as well, which is an effect of the ds106 organisation. All in all "THANK YOU DS106" :)
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