You may remember this post from last week, where I shared my plans for two video assignments. Well here is the first one: Where are they now??

For this 2-star video assignment I chose the cast of the 1987 movie Dirty Dancing. I think we all finish that movie thinking “I wonder what happened to Baby and Johnny?” Well here is your opportunity to find out!

Originially, I was going to just put a picture of the actors from their movie days and then a current photo and say what they were really up to in real life. But the CogDog left a comment on my post saying that I should play around with it and bend the truth a bit. Well clearly that would be much more fun and interesting to watch then my boring idea! Thanks CogDog! So that’s exactly what I did.

Here’s the video. I’ll explain how I made it below!

Let me know what you think!

Video Production

First think I did was open iMovie put in the pictures I wanted to use. I then added all the captions on the post. I used the same script (Lucida Handwriting) throughout. Adding text onto the pictures was actually pretty annoying. I could really get it to the position I wanted it to and it was just being a pain in general. I had almost all the pictures done with iMovie decided to “unexpectedly quit.” That was a VERY said moment So I had to start from the beginning. I added a title and credits page as well.

I knew I was going to put in the Houseman family (Marjorie, Dr. Houseman, Lisa, Baby), Penny and Johnny. I thought these characters were the most important and most of the movie focused around these 6 people. Deciding how to order the characters was the hardest part.  I wasn’t sure if I should put baby with her family or next to Johnny. In the end I decided to put her with her family and then I added another picture at the very end with Johnny and Baby together.

Next I needed to add some music to the video. I decided on the classic “I’ve had the time of my life” but I just wanted the instrumental parts. I looked up the sound track without words and they all sounded bizarre. So I downloaded this video (with singers) and opened it up in Audacity. I cut this huge section of instrumental out and it was about 6 seconds short of the time I needed (36 seconds). So I pieced together another instrumental part and it ended up equaling 35 seconds. BOO! So I adjusted the time on the title and credit screens so the video became 35 seconds.

I then added it to my movie in iMovie. Originally I had no idea how to add music. But I watched part of CogDog’s open lab video yesterday (I was studying when during the lab period) and saw how he did it. It’s very simple, you just drag the music into the video and it pops up as a green line! Easy!

Once the music layered in, I played the video and I really like the way it turned out. Here is how I decided the futures on each of my characters:

• Marjorie- My grandmother’s sister’s daughter (did you get that?), she’s a part of some older women’s tap dance group. I think its so random and I could totally see Marjorie (Kelly Bishop) doing something like this in her “Empty Nest” days.
• Dr. Houseman- Jerry Orbach, the actor who plays this character, went on to star in Law and Order from 1991-2004, playing a detective. Jerry died in 2004.
• Lisa- I’m sure we all remember (Jane Brucker) Lisa’s singing in the movie, pretty painful! So I just made this up randomly. But I can totally see it happening.
• Baby- Once again, made up. Though Jennifer Grey (the actress) did study dance and music in school.
• Penny-The actress Cynthia Rhodes is married and she has three sons. But I decided on this future simply because of Penny’s storyline in the movie.
• Johnny- It seemed obvious to make Johnny open a studio. But Patrick Swayze (the actor) did develop Pancreatic cancer in 2008 and passed away in 2009.
• Baby and Johnny- I figured everyone expects that they’d live happily ever after, and I’m definitely a fan of that storyline. But I figured this was more realistic. Patrick and Jennifer did remain close friends after the movie.

I hope you all enjoy!