The Daily Create is–so far–a very joyful experience. For Pattern, Black/White, and Low Horizon, I used photos I had on hand (hopefully that’s not cheating too much), ones that fit the bill. I was a couple of days behind, and so I worked to catch up, not because I felt obligated but because I was excited. The assignments were cool. What I liked about The Daily Shoot, was that it gave me an assignment, something to do, a way to frame the world so it looked different, to defamiliarize familiar places and things. But the assignments for TDC are also fun (no disrespect to TDS). Starting with a joke–and with video–were great choices.

So, after I cannibalized my Michigan photos for three of the assignments, I then went back to the “Tell a Joke” assignment. For the assignment, I made a quick hand puppet out of a paper bag and had him tell a joke. The first try was terrible. The joke was too long, you couldn’t really tell what I was saying, and my internal mic was turned way up, blowing up the speakers and (presumably) the listeners’ ears. But I was busy, so I uploaded it anyway, and it created a frisson (!) of joy seeing my Bagman up there with all the other great joke tellers from the rest of the DSeeps.

I went back to work, but found another little chunk of time in the afternoon, and decided to re-try the joke with Bagman. I found my mic settings in Control Panel, dialed it down from 100 (!) to 30, and re-told the joke (all of the joke recordings were made with my built-in webcam).

I kept my outtakes, and decided to plug them into the final joke telling itself using Windows Live Moviemaker. They seemed funny, something that would make me laugh and, hopefully, therefore, other people also. I used a shorter joke, which worked a lot better, but it still felt a little short, so I added a final clip of Bagman saying “I told you I’d get the joke out,” or something like that. If I were to re-do, or even just re-edit, the piece, I’d take that out, but it’s up, and I have other projects to do, so.

Bagman, however, stuck around. My spouse loved the video (who doesn’t love puppets?), and I showed her the last TDC assignment, the Old Photo Hold-Up, and she suggested making one for Bagman. She had an even smaller brown bag (!!!), and we shot it in front of a bunch of booze, gave it some yellow paper ribbon hair, printed the photo out, and had contemporary Bagman hold the picture up in front of the wall (GEEK NOTE: our old school thermostat in the background links it back to the joke video). This was a brilliant idea, and a lot of fun to do.

I liked Bagman so much–partly because it’s so silly, and partly because now I have the props–I made the Fantasy TED Talk poster for him, using the template and altering it in GIMP (the chart was also made in GIMP). No idea, really, where the idea came from, except, again, it seemed like something that would make my spouse (and I) laugh, and so, hopefully, that translates.

We’ll see how long Bagman lasts, but for now I like him, so.

This is all tons of fun. Can’t wait for more.