As many of her followers knew, The Fandom Princess was a very avid movie watcher. In fact, most of the people in her world did not indulge in the activity because they did not possess a magical device known as a “television” or a “DVD player.” The Princess had come across these magical artifacts by mere luck (in fact, one of the oldest fandoms that she loved, the Disney Mouseketeers, granted the gifts to her when she became their ruler. Quite nice of them, if you ask me).

Anyway, one of the Princess’ favorite movies to watch was a film called Titanic. It was a romantic film, one in which the Princess loved to indulge in during times of the year when the Fandom Prince (more on him later) was away and all she had was the companion of dwarves, elves, and wizards to keep her company.

One day, the charming, silver-haired wizard sent an owl to her. The owl was carrying a message, and as she read it, she found that the wizard had a task in mind for her. He wanted to see if the Fandom Princess could do some research on some old fairy tale magic, known as a GIF. Being ancient and mysterious, the GIF idea sparked the Princess’ interests, and she put aside some time from her routine homework scrolls to assist the silver-haired wizard.

The first thing she did was head to the library on the west side of the castle. The west library specialized in having books that were needed for academics, research, and scroll-assignments (the Fandom Princess, naturally, preferred to spend her free time in the east library which had the Fiction books, but she knew this was the best place to go to complete the wizard’s task). She walked in and was instantly greeted by her friend, Artemis, a red-headed centaur (marvelous beings) who served as the west wing librarian.

“Good day, Artemis,” She said as she entered the gigantic library. Her other scholarly peers were all quietly working on their assignments for the weekend (and all looked rather drab in the Princess’ opinion).

“Good day, Princess,” Artemis replied, bowing his head to show his respects. “How can I be of service, your highness?”

The Princess took out the scroll from the wizard and passed it over to Artemis. “I need to learn how to make one of these, or at least discover exactly what it is.”

Artemis took one look at the scroll and smiled. He leaned in and said in a whispered voice, “This is powerful magic, Princess. If I show you, you must promise not to give the information out casually to anyone.”

“Of course, Artemis,” the Princess replied, happy that Artemis knew something about this mysterious thing.

With a nod of his head, Artemis turned and began to walk towards his office area on the left side of the library. The Princess followed, keeping in stride with his hooves as they slowly trotted across the cement floor. They reached his desk, and Artemis placed the scroll on his desk, then pulled open one of his many drawers. From it, he pulled out a thick, brown, leather-bound book and handed it to the Princess.

“Return it when you are done, please, your highness. And remember, keep it secret,” Artemis said, bowing down to her once more.

The Princess held the book close to her chest and bowed her head once at the centaur. “Thank you, my friend.”

She sped off through the library, ignoring the glares from the students trying to study, and escaped back to her room (being in her personal tower; she was a Princess, after all). She sat down at her desk and opened the book that Artemis deemed so sacred.

One hour passed, then another, and yet another. The Princess had learned exactly what a GIF was, and more importantly, how to make one. She sent for ink and a fresh roll of parchment, and frantically began to write to a response to the silver-haired wizard:

Well, let me tell you about this GIF making thing. Not the easiest to do when you misread instructions, that’s for sure. And that’s exactly what I did the first time go round (try not to judge me too much). But I knew our super smart wizard (aka Professor Levine) trusted us to be able to figure this out on our own. And after much trial and error, I finally did!

The movie I chose to use for this Visual Assignment was Titanic. It has been my favorite movie for as long as I can remember, and I love it so much that I can quote the majority of it. I even went to see it in 3D when they re-released it last year (I went by myself because non of my friends would come with me, but I have no regrets, whatsoever). I wanted to pick a scene that was sweet, romantic, and central to the movie, so I picked the scene in which Jack and Rose share their first kiss. Classic, right?

To do this, I first did some research online about how to make a GIF without photoshop. I found the clip I wanted on Youtube, then proceeded to follow the instructions that I found on a forum. They said that you would have to download the video, so I used KeepVid in order to download and save the video to my documents.

From there, I turned to our lovely ds106 handbook. I followed the instructions on Trimming Videos with MPEG Streamclip to trim the part I wanted to make into a GIF, then proceeded to use a very handy resource called GIMP to actually create the GIF. In fact, Jim Groom outlined the process very well and I was finally successful! Check it out:

Pretty snazzy, huh? Thanks for trusting us to do this, and for your guidance, O’ magnificent wizard!