Forbidden Social Event

Julie, a government employee and in charge of reducing creative impulses among the citizens, finally becomes uncertain if the attitude that she represents is really valuable for mankind. She starts exploring the world her government despite so much. For this she managed to be a guest on a party which takes place in an hidden underground world.

The people here are wearing strange clothes more like a disguise and are enjoying wild music and dance. Julie is not sure what she should think about this world.

I did the gif according to the assignment "Juxtaposition", where you take a piece of artwork and try to make a video or animated gif corresponding to this. I looked up a photograph in the Internet and later found a video which shows crazy looking people with hats and masks and stars or rather crosses. I also found the colors are similar. From the video I created a gif by looking for appropriate frames. I did this the way it is described in the ds106 handbook.

Anti-Creativity Campaign

Julie, the heroine of my final project is a "valuable" citizen of Thasus, a big and powerful city. Thasus' government has high-flown intentions concerning the growth of their powerful appearance, but recently has to fight with the fact that people refuse to work in professions like information technology or unskilled work. They rather want to live a small life with a lot of time for their own creations, like painting or movie making. For this reason they started a anti-creativity campaign. The following poster has been created just for this campaign.

I think a campaign like this must have a core of truth, but as it is all the time a lot of points are not displayed in the poster. The government picks out of all the truth that leading a creative life is not really easy. It can be unsettled and troublesome and often leads into the depth of people's soul, where it could be sadder than expected.
Actually I don't believe in creativity as something bad. I just created the poster to make a point in my story. For this I just left out the many blessed issues of creativity.

This poster is completely created in Gimp. I've downloaded some pictures from the Internet and arranged them on the canvas. After this I played around with Gimp's blending modes. When I was fine with the result I added some text. The text can be edited as a picture (rotating, scaling) by right mouse clicking the text layer in the layer palette and choosing Discard Text Information.

You can find the ds106 assignment idea here.



Pictures I've used from the Internet:

Sad woman:
http://www.trendhunter.com/slideshow/diy-fashion

Sad child:
http://www.creativeshowcase.net/campaigns/help-us-stop-it

Sad man:
http://toniferreira.blog.com/2012/04/20/men-also-cry/

Mask:

Splatter background:
http://www.weshuffor.com/shop/Splatter_Red.html

Julie

The following series of animated gifs is part of my final project, where I am telling a story about a woman who was an integrated part of her country's society but then becomes part of a world which opposes her government.
The gifs show both, the character and the plot of the story in a general way.

	Julie's Career
Julie Underground

When I started searching for material for the gifs I knew Julie should be a strong and skilled woman but not without physical weaknesses like bad eyesight. however, I did not find any videos which combines the image of a heroine and she depending on glasses. I just imagine her now wearing lenses but it is not the same as the visually obvious dependence on a seeing aid.
I was more lucky with the idea that Julie hurts her foot and needs a device for help here. As you can see the last gif nicely combines Julies heroic character with a walking aid.

This work is after the assignment Multi-Frame GIF Story and I did it the way ds106 explains it at the Creating Animated GIFs with (free) Open Source Software page. On my page I arranged it in a table. At blogger you can do this while using the HTML editor and adding the code for a table. After this you can stay in the HTML editor and you can use the option Add Image, which you can find at the menu bar.

I used the following Youtube videos for the above animated gifs.

Julie in School:
Scene from the Pickwick movie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6u3GAQgZpww

Julie in politics and business:
Interview with Ivanka Trump
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SivCXZeQlmg

Julie and combat:
Report by Global National
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RupHxNZCais

Julie underground:
A "Tatort" movie (german crime mysterie series)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fStfjlNp8ro

Julie after she got hurt:
A commercial by Samsung (disabled people and sports)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SJG7apaV7c

Nature's concept of Mashup & Remix

"Everything is a Mashup" (by Kirby Ferguson) was one of the statements I've thought a lot about while exploring the concepts of remix and mashup. In this series it is not just about songs and visual media but also about different areas like the Apple computer. Apple took for example the idea to arrange icons on the screen as if it were the top of the desk. They add the drag and drop idea and have been successful with that. Still Apple could not have done it without ideas which already existed earlier.
I like nature and think it is the basis of all what people concern. I don't think there have been aliens, who brought us media, but we developed them from natural concepts. In the case of media this is the concept of communication and sharing experience to add to the collective knowledge.
Back to mashup and remix I remember that the basics of living organisms are tiny proteins which are combined to the genetic make-up. Further this genetic make-up tells what the cells will be like and the cells add together will be organs and a set of organs are a human being, animal or plant. That's it. Everything is a mashup, even us.

I started my remix creations with  Alan Levine's funny assignment idea to send him on vacation after an exhausting ds106 semester. It seemed easy and except from that I didn't get along with Popcorn the remix software, it was. It was also fun, but I often thought rather to be careful what I mix into the video of someone I know somehow. For example I've found several songs for which I was worried they could be offensive, or I did not want to add something completely stupid. This was rather different with the following assignments, where I had no relation at all to the author of the media I've remixed. I sometimes thought about what they would say to my changes on their creations, but not more. You can find the video here.

Some thoughts of what a person might say to my remix I had with Cory Doctorow, who I display in my way as a colorful creature according to the assignment to remix a photo of him. I did not think much about of altering  Jonathan Worth's photo, but rather if Cory Doctorow likes being seen like I do see him or at least displayed him.

A third remix was about using the remix generator of ds106.
I got this, taking some artwork and reinforcing its meaning and adding some of the Seuss styles. For this I took a work which was done by an earlier student and remixed it to the Seuss' Twilight Gothic.

My first mashup assignment was to combine some given media. First I thought there's nothing I can do with the media, but then I had some ideas and in the end it was really fun to do the assignment, which has become animated gifs and  an audio mashup.

I further chose creating a mashup of the trailers of a triology (assignment details), which has become a rather dramatic piece of media. The same drama appears in a mashup of two songs (assignment details). This lead me to the assumption, that the mashup concept is good to create dramatic content. You can also find this point in my essay about mashup and remix.

I did even more, which is a daily create where I created a poem. I later mixed this up with a screenshot of an animation I did years ago.

Green Lioness

Wings

Wheeling high above in the sky,
Independently,

Nearly Lost,

Gliding towards a wildlife sanctuary,
Sunnily.

And now I have to take some food and mix it to a meal from which I will take the good things. The rest will go back to nature where it will be decomposed by little living beings and where then a mashup flower might appear from the new available minerals.

I should not forget to tell you about my character and story for my final project.

Mashing up the Remix

I really needed the two weeks to find out about mashup and remix. I actually started the ds106 assignments before I've understood the concepts of mashup and remix. What I can tell you from heart you can hear in the following audio. I rather had talked about this to a friend, but they are all very occupied with themselves and they did not like the idea to listen to another fancy talk of mine, but there must have been someone like butterflies and fairies, who I tried very hard to ignore. Unfortunately my microphone was not able to leave out what her sensors told her. And yes, I took some notes, which makes all a bit as if I'm reading out alound. It is because my language is not as fluent as it should be.





To say more about the topic, my first impression was it is all about copyrights. The Remix Manifest for example is a mashup/ remix and the same way about copyrights. The ds106 show provided for the regular students also mainly talked about copyrights. I was a bit bored about this which is my normal reaction when learning about law which anyway just tries to restrict you mostly in advantage of people who are advantaged enough (leaving out protection from violence, naturally). Even the mashups and remixes are are often about copyrights. I personally did not like much of the examples I looked at (Scary Mary). Especially the mashups seem very broken and inconsistent, which spoils my desire for some harmony while consuming media. This way I am not really satisfied with my own mashup creations. The one thing I can admit is, that you can communicate themes like injustice, madness or extreme mental tension better with the mashup and remix concept. It is a bit like twelve-tone music, which has its own harmony within, you can only understand when educated in it. Still twelve-tone often is used to create a tensed ambiance or to musically explain that bad things happen.

Which I really like is that you can make something your own or build your own world by doin mashups and remixing. We have to take what the world provides to us and it feels always good not just let issues effecting us, but rather taking part in creating our environment. This way I liked the idea of mashing up (remixing) the male Twilight hero Edward with a completely other type of woman than Bella the Twilight heroine is.

C.Doctorow - Mysterious and Colorful

This is meant to be a remix of one of Jonathan Worth's photographs of Cory Doctorow. I learned from Jonathan's project where he invites people to remix his images from Cory, because I attend the open online community ds106, where theidea is listed in the assignment bank.

I also read about this on Alan Levine's blog post on the project. This post was also my first inspiration, concerning the idea of Cory Doctorow as a wise man. I just thought a wise man living in our world must be more modern and because I see popular literature as colorful and lifely all became a mysterious and colorful sculpture; mysterious, because what I've read from Cory's  novels I found mysterious.

I've photographed the sculpture and now my work has become a funny postcard.

Here you can see the original image by Jonathan Worth.

How this is made? Look at my desk:

So sorry, but the picture of my desk got lost ☹

On the screen you can see the photograph of Cory Doctorow and on my desk Play-Doh, felt-pens, paper and scissors. I took little pieces of the Play-Doh and build the sculpture with this pieces. I also drew some glasses and two hands and cut them out and pressed this paper cuts into the Play-Doh at the right spot.
Creating like this I remember my professor in art university Andrea Tippel. She always said "Die Mühe lassen wir jetzt mal weg" which means in English something like "Just leave behind having trouble while making art.". She wanted to say that there can not be any art where you trouble yourself too much.



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Just A Mum

When I saw  something about a Youtube Duet I asked myself what the last song is I can remember I listened to, because for more then 15 years I haven't listen much to popular music but rather classical music.

Finally I did remember that there was a young woman who sang about her mother, so I typed in mother and got this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ2tluarzZs, which leads you to a video of the performance of “Mother” byRoger Waters & Sinead O'Connor. I knew it is not the song I've looked for, yet it is the singer who sang the song and I recalled the lyric includes a garden and flowers; the right words to find the right song “Nothing compares2U” by Sinead, 1989. For this I chose a video on youtube that combines a slideshow of landscape images with the song. I did a mashup of the two videos by making one partly transparent and emphasized sometimes one of the songs by pushing up the volume. This comes out very nicely.

"Mother" feels harsh, for it describes the mother of a boy or man as making him dependent on her by inducing fear to live his life. I thought this rather interesting to me because the song I remembered was a song about someone who has loved their Mum* but she has died recently. That Sinead sings both songs I find compelling.
In the end I could not understand that in both songs nothing is mentioned about that mothers are only people and for my post chose the title "Just A Mum".

*maybe it is about her boyfriend, who has left her; I find the song rather ambiguous, especially the melancholy style which implies rather singing about a lost mother than a lost boyfriend

Blue White Red Insight

A mashup from the trailers of the trilogy "The three colors Blue White Red".

This trilogy is meant to be about love and loss, which I can agree with. Still, it is also a lot about watching people's privacy and coming nearer to some, maybe unpleasant, truth. This I tried to catch in my trailer version.

I took several clips from the three trailers and combined them like I thought they will convey my interpretation of the three films. I further worked on the colors of the clips, which was a bit annoying for you can not choose multiple clips in premiere elements to edit them together, but finally I reached what I've imagined earlier.

For the sound I worked on the volume of the clips and mixed the different soundtracks from the different trailers, so that here and there the audio sounds discordant. This way I tried to emphasize that it is about the unpleasant experience to find out an inconvenient truth.

I did not feel very sure of how to create a mashup, when I started the editing, but I now have an idea of what it means to do a mashup of different video content and maybe my next mashup will be already very artistic and skilful. Yet, I like the result, which gives me the feeling of having brought a piece of my inner world into the outside, while the original trailers didn't show anything of this. How does this work?

The trailers you can find via the below links:
Blue:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hxu6my_t4pM

White:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTLlk6FIP3I

Red:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKA_4iycWq4

Never Free To Go

Final Project - story and assignment list.

Story:

 

Never Free To Go

 

Julie, age about 30, lives in an underground world of a big city named Thasis. Julie is a bright and beautiful women, maybe blonde and with blue eyes or black with light brown eyes. She is tall as well as strong and this way seems nearly perfect, yet there's one thing, her sight is very bad and she always needs help from glasses or lenses.

Julie once refused to do what she was forced to do, which is giving up her own ideas and being a tool for the once in power in her time (maybe past, maybe future, maybe present).

As a child she has already been chosen to be one of the future key personalities of the country and has been sent to a special school to be trained in economy, politics and combat together with similar intellectual and/ or creative blessed young people.

After she has finished her education, Julie worked for the government of her country, named Numbaro, where she finally has become head of the department for special matters in the country. When she was in charge with reducing creativity of the common person to make them more controllable, Julie has to struggle with ideas like doing things from your heart but not from being told. She had opportunity to observe what people not very like her are doing with their lives. One painted all day, earning nothing, another fought for the rights of other people and put himself in serious danger for this.

When she realized that she started to admire this she tried to contact some of these people, just to talk to them. When her superiors watched her while attending a party she rather had to prohibit, they send the police to arrest her for support of illegal gatherings. Yet she already has gotten the trust of her new acquaintance, who hide her in their secret underground world, of which she has become an imposrtant part soon.

She now has a leading position in this world and her newest task is to organize the rescue of some young people from prison, where they have been locked for dancing. She succeeds, but one of her feet gets terribly hurt. The beautiful young women unfortunately from now is crippled or at least has to wait a long time until she will be able to move without any help of other people or devices, like crutches or rather a wheelchair.

Assignments:

 

I may start with creating a visual message which is shocking. This message may show that Julie's government thinks creativity is dangerous by destabilizing the existing order.

Design to shock:

 http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/design-to-shock/

I then will display a gif, which shows someone is spying on Julie, together with a gif of a party of (maybe strange) people.
GIF Me Again About My Eyes:
 http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/gif-me-again-about-my-eyes/
Juxtaposition:
http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/juxtaposition/
 I may reinvent this assignment by using an art photograph instead of a painting.

For the next step I have to reinvent an assignment to change it in making some police announcements arround the order of arresting Julie. The last announcement will be, that she has not been arrested but vanished.
911, What’s Your Emergency?:
http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/911-whats-your-emergency/

The next creation will be a rotoscoped dance of some young people.
This is an assignment I will upload to the assignment bank, plus tutorial.

After this the young people will be rescued, for which I again chose an audio assignment, where I use part of audio and visual of  a movie to create my rescue story.
Context:
http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/context/

The last work will be a kind of story board from animated gifs, where Julie is shown in some situation in her underground life and in her earlyer "normal" life, which is a kind of summary of Julies life.
Multi-Frame GIF Story:
http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/multi-frame-gif-story/

This is much and I may be forced to skip some of the intended assignments.

Seuss' Twilight Gothic

A remix from a remix.

When I tried the remix machine on ds106 I got the combination of Adapt an artist’s work [remixed]: Dr Suess It. As recommended I looked for examples of the original assignment in order to  Dr. Seuss this and found one that has already been remixed. It is an image of the famous Wood painting "American Gothic" remixed with the portraits of the Twilight's leading actors (link to this example).
This is what I've created based on two earlyer works.

 

 

First I searched for Dr. Seuss, because I did not know about this stories. I again got a bit more involved into American Culture, which I liked. I found several images and downloaded some of them:

• Cat in the hat: http://marriedbyjosh.com/dr-seuss-wedding-vows/
• Two guys with blue hari: http://funny-things-are-everywhere.tumblr.com/
• A screenshot of a crooked rake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9YnImnSipg

I separated parts of the images and copied them into the Twilight Gothic image. Finally I experimented with the filters of my photo editing software to make the bright colors of the Dr. Seuss pictures more congruent with the original image.

I like the result although I can not say why. I know about the male twilight actor that he is meant to be a vampire, who doesn't like hurting the girl he loves. Mabe this is the reason why the rake shows away from her. I also think I tried to liberate both the older images and make them free from historical and cultural burdens, make them modern to create their own future life, like young people should do.

Media Metamorphoses

Click the audio for the story.





For this assignment "Storytelling with Recycled Media" you were obliged to take media from a page on minus.com, where ds106 students earlyer have uploaded media, for which they themselves have no use. Unfortunately there's a lack of videos and I've missed the videos I've upoaded. I presume somthing went wrong during the uploading process.

Still, the media are interesting and because I wanted something move I chose pictures to make animated gifs from them. I used a filter in Gimp to blend two images over a background. You can find it in the menu Filters -> Animation -> Blend. Here you can choose how many steps you need for the blending. After the filter has applied you can playback the animation (menu Filters -> Animation -> Playback.) I saved the file as an animatied gif.

I also chose 3 sounds and mixed them to one file which tells the story requested for the assignment.

Going on Vacation

Where to send Alan Levin on vacation? A difficult question when you hardly know someone. From his photos I know he already has been to many places anyway. Maybe I should send him to a kind of inner journey, I imagined.
Sometimes when I were on vacation I just thought how nice it would be if I could do all the things I wanted to do for so long a time. This way I tried to understand which this could be for Alan and I hope I am not completely wrong. Anyway, right or not it is a nice video.

The idea is to mash up a video by Alan Levine with pictures, google maps, soundcloud songs or twitter searches. Alan provides spaces within the video where you can add the appropriate media. This should be done with an online editor for mashing up called Mozilla Popcorn Maker. I tried, but it did not work for me at all. First I struggled to start it from the "Weekly-Stuff-To-Do-Side", but did not succeed. Then I copied the Youtube video to the Popcorn editor and added the media, but when I tried to add a soundcloud song the editor stopped working. I also tried the preview and had to realize that the media did not appear at the right place. I skipped the idea of editing with Popcorn and proceeded with my video editor.

First I did not know at all what to add, but then I saw a picture from a child sitting in a bin which seemed to fit nicely to the video. I then went on with the idea of presenting things which are related to all what we can not afford thinking of when we are adults with a strict schedule. This way I added
a picture of a website about "The Thief Lord", which is a childrens story about children lost in venice and adults who wants to be children again and a twitter search result about "The Thief Lord" and Venice. You can hardly realize both, because I tried to fit it onto the screen in the video.
You further can see a video of a growing tulip and another of a mouse sleeping side by side with a kitten, which I both trimmed to get the appropriate clip. I also added a song about someone who thinks about how it is to be an adult instead of a child. And last but not least the destiny of the journey has become a vidoe about a talented guitar playing little boy.

Nature's Breath

Gif from two pictures with different focuses.

 

Slow

 

 Fast

The same picture taken with different focuses combined to a Gif. This looks like nature breathes. The fruit looks tempting, too.

 

 

 

Video Spring

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.

Interactive Spiderwick

When I was at art university and this way watched the world of art for some while, I expolored that artists may call themselves free and liberal, but they are not. I studied the Fine Arts and my professors very much critizised the ideas of their students and by this taught them the rules of the Fine Arts. Nobody did dare to contratict, but I quitted some day, a kind of outnumbered.
One issue was somehow arrogance concerning the content of artwork. If I have a great idea and clearly do artwork like a skilled painting, sulpture or printing, why not having pop culture as content? I ignored the rules by doing 12 big paintings on the Harry Potter movies. I've paid dearly for this; no aknowledement at all for this great paintings, except from people who were interested to show them children. I did not mind, just for little children the paintings might be frightening, because my idea was to bring to consciousness what big faces on a wall could cause, namely being overwhelmed or even frightened while being movies.

However. I had to fight this rules again for a ds106 assignment, in which you may comment while playing a game.
The most influential people in my life would not like to hear that I play any game anyway, except maybe together with other people and then a board game. This is OK, but I'm so excited of exploring different media, that base on a story in a book. This case the Spiderwick Books by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi.
This way, apart from commenting, I discuss the claim that the game is completely after the movie. Yet, I have to say that the game has mostly its own elements very different from book and movie. Even more important I find that the game contains ideas of the books, which are clearly not part of the movie.

 

 



Which I did not forsee was how much editing this will going to be.

 

 

I played the game for about 30 minutes and recorded it with a software called bandicam. I thought it might be more lively when I speake and record the comment the same time. Now I had 30 minutes of game play and 30 minutes of comment and I had to make it into a clip not too long. When I cut the material anywhere I had to find a piece which fit to this cut. In the above screenshot you can see what this meant. I've worked hours on this.

Apart from the cutting I added illustrations from the books, which I found on the Spiderwick Wiki and I put on scenes form the Spiderwick movie to make my point clear. To find sources for pictures and to scan the movie for appropriate scenes was part of my last week preproduction for this assignment. 

 



The Lion and Me

Some time ago I did an audio assignment, for which I recorded foley sound for a movie clip. I uploaded this to a group at Soundcloud and wondered about what will become out of this. I  now know. For the assignment "Charlie Chaplin’s Foley Artist" you now can use all the uploaded foley sounds to finish your video and so I did.

It was a nice experience to have not just material I recorded but could choose from what other people have created for this assignment, which often were more funny than my recording. This helped to develop a lovely story.

 

 

 

This was not too complicated. I just had to combine the clip with the appropriate foley. All the same I added two music clips which I both let appear repeatedly. This gave the movie an exotic musical rhythm.  I lik this because of the tiger and the lion and to make Charlie appear more modern, which he surely was anyway. 

For the last segments I had to think out something, because there was no foley given for this. I decided to record some dialogue. I further add two groans, one for the tiger and one for the lion.

 

Here a screenshot of my video editor, where I have already removed the sound of the clip and I also have added the given foley sounds.

 

 

 

 

Here a list of links to the materials I have used:

 

foley sounds:

https://soundcloud.com/klasalata/lions-cage-foley-style by Kelsie
https://soundcloud.com/heymsparker/holy-foley by MsParker
https://soundcloud.com/confusedeasily/chaplin-lion-03 by ConfusedEasily
https://soundcloud.com/klamb912/foley-sounds by Klamb
https://soundcloud.com/cwyrough/chaplin-foley by Cwyrough
https://soundcloud.com/kaitlyn-crotty/chaplin-lion-02 by kaitlyn

additional sounds:
Tigers Roar
http://freesound.org/people/videog/sounds/149190/
Lions Roar
http://freesound.org/people/Terwelp/sounds/24797/

music:
Flowers Simplistic Beats
http://freesound.org/people/hello_flowers/sounds/34518/
Chance Piano Intro
http://freesound.org/people/toiletrolltube/sounds/181700/



Delusion - A Video Peom

I once designed three photo cards and sent them to a friend, because I thought he might be interested to know something about my past. He has never answered to this offer to deepen the relationship. This is also past now.
Yesterday, while thinking about what else video I can produce I remembered having read something at ds106's assignment collection about ambiance in a video. More precisely the assignment advises to record a piece of literature and to add clips and music for a little video production.
I decided to look for a poem about memories and combine this with the photo cards. I did not know how much I had to remember while producing the video.
First I had to remember that my PC has crashed recently and I've lost nearly all my digital work and photographs and with it the photo cards. I searched my e-mails for the photo card post and while doing so, any mail I caught sight of were reminders to my past, good and bad ones. I finally found the cards, but thought the original photographs would be better for my project. I again had to recollect,  this time if I anyway still owe this good old paper photographs. When I had to move into a smaller apartment I really had to get rid of many things savagely, a rather unpleasant memory. Anyway, I can not find out about the photographs, for I presume them in my storage place far away in my hometown. Memories, memories, memories.

While searching for a poem about memories I observed that there are many which describe memories as troublesome and I find even one poem which was not really about recollection but more about stumbling over truth you rather want to forget. I compared this to my intention for the video and found I did not plan to make it a drama. Still it was intriguing to combine my more neutral photographs with a dramatic poem.

For the video I used the poem "Delusion" by Alyssa Waters.
I like how the poem is written in a way that it is not clear if it is mostly imagery or complaining about a real event. For example once there is a person approaching the speaker of the poem:

He makes his way towards me, majestic also wise,
it was hard for me to distinguish between what's loving and what's lies.

This could mean a remembered treacherous person approaches or it can also mean truth comes nearer and both may cause the following reaction:

My heart it starts to flutter,
My body starts to fall-
I try to scream out for help
but I don't know who to call.

In this way I produced my video to make the impression of something wants to be realized, but it feels scary and confusing.

Because I've already thought through my past this may not be a recent problem to me, but it was, this I can remember.

Additional elements in the movie are a video with clips of rainy weather, a clip of sun in the trees and a recording while I am turning right around. I also added some music which is called Violin Mystery.

Here you can see a screenshot of the project in a still early state.

 

 

The video recordings are already added and I have worked on the photo cards to make them appear and vanish again by manipulating transparency and motion.

Later I added the recording of the poem. I did so by mixing it with the turned version of the piece, which gives the video an element of mystery.

The "Violin Mystery" music is a very short piece, but I found it is great to just repeat it which gives the movie more unity.



Troll Beauty

I like watching fantastical movies mainly for the imagination they show. What I've never understood, why trolls? And why do they always fall on down with a big thud? See here Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone (2001) and Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring (2001). I thought they are just big and boring.

I started looking for troll scenes for this assignment, which is to use five 1 second clips from 5 movies to create a 5 second video.  First I hoped I will find more clips with trolls falling on their bags, but then I got a new idea. It looked like many of the videos I watched were caring for showing me the reason why so often trolls are so intensively occupied in fantasy movies. I observed movie makers of recent fantasy films has gone beyond trolls being just stupid and hideous, but often let their heroes discover beauty where audience like me can not see any. The effect with me was in fact that I also were able to see it. Yet, what is the King in Merlin doing?

After choosing five seconds of my gathered clips I arranged them from "normal dump troll" to "passionate love for a troll". When I watched the result, nothing of my intention was noticeable, but I wanted it to be noticed and like this I again ignored the demands of an assignment and just slowed the movie down about two thirds, but I've just learned today there is nothing wrong with being creative.

  

 

This is how I did arrange the clips in premiere elements to start the editing [after realizing that having the movies assembled at 0, you have all the audio at once and you can just see the topmost clip (: ]

 

 

 

 

Clips I've used for this video are:

 

Hansel and Gretel Behind the Scenes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoqD_9O-YUM

Merlin King and the Troll

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1dGeyIPaU4

Snow White & the Huntsman - Troll Attack

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6uSLUnfna8

The Hobbit - Troll Battle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iENuf2muUaI

Troll Hunter - Bridge Armour Scene

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwuHhlD5dO0

 



 

 

Harmonium Love

Why turning parts of a modern movie into a silent movie? I wondered while reading about this ds106  video assignment. I had no idea but was just intrigued by the idea to do so.

I did some research on how to change a movie into a silent film and found that mostly the advice was to imitate the style completely, including original music for silent movies and taking care that in the clip you can't see any modern props, like modern cars.
I thought about this and decided to just use the elements but not to try imitating an entire film from the silent era. This way I changed the color into black and white and made it run faster, I added some noise and rustling to audio and video and I added a music track.
Which I did not is choosing clips, that don't contain modern issues like modern cars, and I don't choose any old music but modern compositions.

Some time ago I got introduced to the movie Punch-Drunk Love (2002), which tells a story about a growing couple, in particular about the male part. He is depicted as passionate and even violent and it is not for certain if the reason is that he lives under the pressure of keeping up his business. Another reason may be that he is controlled by his sisters and feels helpless towards their interferences in his life. However, my clip doesn't contain any of this, but I concentrated on a little story within the story, where a harmonium is found by the protagonist and finally carried to his girl friend.

 

The clips doesn't contain much dialogue and speak for themselves, so I thought this might be great for the silent style. In addition, although the film is in color, the tones are rich in contrast which I thought important concerning the change to black and white. Finally the running scenes of the movie remind me on running scenes of silent movies, which always appear funny, for the silent movies are running faster. I wanted them appear funny or at least emphasize them to show that it is a kind of crazy in a lovely way to carry a harmonium around. I myself wouldn't be able to do so, for "stupid" embarrassment, which is why I like watching it in a film. I also felt the faster move of the scene associates tension within the story, which is desired.
For the choice of the audio I myself wonder about it. It is true that the title "Music For a Found Harmonium" was great to match my little clip composition, but does also not really emphasize the visual part, but is rather treated on an equal bases with the video, which might be OK anyway. It also is very different from any silent movie music. I even added to the start of the clip some digital music. Together with the visual style of the very first films it appears surreal and adds to the surreality of someone throws a harmonium out of a car and then it is carried around like a new found treasure.

I edited the clips with premiere elements, which is a bit complicated, compared to more expensive editing software, but it is possible to get good results, especially because the effects come out very nicely, they are not just numerous but well thought through concerning aesthetic and quality. This way I add a filter who makes the film look old (in German "Alter Film"). That it was, except from making adjustments to the filter and speeding the clip up.
It is difficult with sound, when you want to reduce its quality, because almost any effect is designed to improve the audio. I had to edit the sound in audacity to add noise and rustling, mostly by hand using the pencil tool.
To put in the title cards I had to create a black area, which I did not manage in premiere elements. I had to design it in gimp and to import this as media. Then I added the title with the text tool. I could have cut the clips and add text between the clips, still, I needed to have the possibility to change the position of the cards for the right moment of appearance.
All the same with the opening title sequence and closing credits.

I like the result very much, but I already have received a message by Youtube about using material which may be copyrighted. I hope they'll not remove this nice piece of art, which I did not produce to harm any rights but to enrich the world of art, movie, music.


Video Run-Up

I've started out learning about video production 4 years ago, when I did a two month course on it. The course was specialized on making video for the internet and included working with a video camera, lighting, learn to speak clearly, green screen, presenting videos in the internet and marketing and law, in case we want to build our own startup. I did not mention the video editing, but I learned also about video editing. We used Final Cut and I wish I could work with it for the next two weeks, but I can not.

Since the above course I've used Video Pad to edit any video, which was OK, because my video projects have just been small projects, mostly combine images to an animation. Yet, I recently changed my operation system to Windows 8 and Video Pad is just available for free when you use earlier windows versions. I tried Windows Movie Maker, but it is a catastrophe, mainly because it crashes all the time. This way I had to decide weather to purchase Video Pad or a different editing software and I decided on Premiere Elements, which has better audio options. Its not Final Cut, but it will do and it hasn't crashed once yet.

However, this week was anyway not about editing except from a little piece, you easily could manage with Mpeg Streamclip, at least nearly because this software does not adjust different formats you may have to combine automatically. I actually fixed this in Premiere Elements.
The just mentioned clip was the sum of some analysis of parts of the first Matrix movie. You can find two posts on this at my blog.
First a post about a scene which has been watched in a special way: first without audio, being attentive to the visual part, especially the camera angles, second just listen to the audio and how this matches the visual part, and third watching the clip the normal way, becoming aware how both parts work together or if something was overlooked.
The second post went further with the analysis of "The Matrix". I've found out interesting facts about the making of the film and illustrated this with two more movie scenes. Then I combined the most important discoveries in an extra clip.

I did not like much the assignment where Youtube genres were the topic. Actually I don't fancy Youtube much but rather vimeo. I just use it to be more conform to the ds106 possibilities. I like to keep for my vimeo account at least a touch of professionalism. On my new Youtube account are vidoes I enjoy because I can see a great deal of personal achievement I have made since I've done some ds106 video assignments, but I feel very uncomfortable with the fact that anyone can watch them, in particular the ones where I myself am displayed. It is more getting used to self representation, but it is far away from being ready for an audience of strangers.
However, I tried to make this interesting to me by observing that Youtube clips, different from the movie industry, are often about reality, not fiction. I in particular were interested in the various videos about animals doing remarkable things and the possibility that the clip is all fake.

The most challenging task this week was to do some planning and post production for two video assignments anyone could choose freely. I am used to just start with what is in my mind and I have to admit this could end up in some chaos and unnecessary delay. This week I tried to sort my thoughts and ideas in advance to produce some good video the next week. Find here which pre-production I did to create a silent film clip and a clip about a video game.

During this week 10 there have been some interesting dailycreates, from which I've chosen two. This way I've produced my first little shadow play, which I always wanted to do, but did not dare. DS106 is a place I feel I can try out things as all participants do and I just made some shadow puppets without reading a book about this at first, which I previous felt I should do. It was rather interesting to figure out how to record shadows on the wall or if anyway rather record the back of a screen, but I realized that the shadows get larger when further away from the screen, which did not fit to the impression I intended to achieve.

Watch yourself the result which displays a dance.

I also made a drawing of a nice present I once received, which was a chamber orchestra in a yard, when I had my first art exhibition, which by the way was one of three or so, because I don't like exhibiting my artwork.

 

 

This week has been challenging in its own way. For me it is always easier to create something visually or audio. Writing is different. Not really the language which one might expect with English as a second language, but more to put ideas together and try to make it interesting just with words.

Yet, I felt as if I have grown a great deal to be more serious in my approach of communicating ideas. It might be important to speak out and display issues of interest and to inform friends and people in general about what I've found out. I have never had this feeling with my visual work.