Update 3/27/12: As announced in last night’s class, everyone in the UMW sections will be getting an extra week to complete the video stars. So all 30 stars due by the end of week 11 (April 8th at midnight). If you are ahead of the game, good for you—if not, here’s your chance to catch up. I will update the assignment on the ds106 site accordingly.

Welcome to weeks 9 and 10 of ds106, arguably the most intense. So, before we outline the details below let me make one quick reminder: don’t wait until the last minute to finish a video assignment, it won’t end well for you ;)

Week 9
During week 9 we will be talking about reading films as well as introducing some of the elements of video formats, codecs, compression, conversion, and basic editing. Please see Andy Rush’s web video resource site for a fairly comprehensive overview of web video: http://video.umwblogs.org

What’s more, I highly recommend this series of resources by Andy Rush providing a thorough introduction of web video in a presentation that he delivered to ds106 last Spring. If you are new to video and its many intracies this is an essential introduction an overview:

Additionally, everyone will be required to do 15 stars of video assignments that will be due by midnight on Sunday, March 25th. At least two of the assignments should be in pre-production already building on your work from last week. It’s time to see your plan for those projects through. Additionally, you will need to turn your “Analyze This” movie blog post into a video essay for 5 of your 15 stars for week 9. You can see that assignment here: http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/video-essay/

For some pointers on what a good video essay may look like, please be sure to watch Rob Ager’s “Film psychology THE SHINING spatial awareness and set design” for inspiration for what’s possible. This may be one of the most brilliant examples of a creative and intellectual reading of a great film.

See also the video essays created by last year’s ds106 students.

Week 10
In week 10 we will be further developing your video editing skills by introducing remixes, mashups, an recut versions of works. We will also be discussing the implications of copyright, ownership, and the larger tenets of remix culture in relationship to media production.

For Week 10 we will be requiring 15 more stars of assignments, with the one required assignment being the Movie Trailer Mashup assignment. All assignments will be due Sunday, April 1st (an no that’s not a joke!).

A smorgasbord of resources/examples:

• Kind of Screwed – Andy Baio’s tale of trying to do everything right in doing a derivative work and still getting sued. Opens many questions on copyright, fair use, derivative works.
• Let Us Never Speak Of This Thing Again resources and audio from a ds106 session in 2011 from Brian Lamb
• Everything is a Remix – Kirby Ferguson’s documentary series
• A Fair(y) Use Tale recut of Disney films to explain copyright.
• RIP: a remix manifesto a documentary on mashup culture featuring the work of Girl Talk

Just a few samples…

• Buffy vs Edward: Twilight Remixed – two different sources re-edited to be coherent story
• Don’t Tase Me Bro/MC Hammer – news event mashed up with music
• Scary Mary (recut movie trailer – family movie reversed to Horror)
• The Shining Recut (recut movie trailer – horror movie reversed to be love story)
• Star Trek Meets Monty Python – redubbing
• Kel McKeown: Instructional Video – creating new sounds from recut instructional videos
• Hitler Downfall DMCA Takedown – retelling via captioning
• Literal Video Versions – music videos form literal interpretation of lyrics
• Odd Kid – lip sync and remix
• Sweded Films – low/no budget remakes of hollywood films
• Weird Al Yankovic Bob parody plus a twist, lyrics are palindromes