WEEK 10…actually sounds a lot more depressing than it should. EEK, not ready for this, so overwhelming even though it should be getting easier. However, I’m not doubting myself, I have more faith than ever! But this week revolved all around movies, seems basic enough right? If thought that it was basic, you shouldn’t even be reading this post especially if you know ANYTHING about DS106. Anyways, more then just movies but reading movies, understanding each layer and what it has to offer. The biggest concept that the next couple of weeks is going to teach us is about mixing, clipping, and combining videos, similar to the weeks leading up to the Radio Show (yes, I just did have an ah-ha! moment). I’ve already been pretty well-versed in iMovie but this week has helped me become friendly with MPEG and really see what it has to offer, so i am very giddy about setting that in motion. So this week, we had several assignments just to get our feet wet.

The first assignment that really helped us was Reading Movies, which involved taking a movie clip and listening to it in three different ways: without audio, then without visual but with audio then bringing the two back together. After watching three movies that taught me different techniques, such as the different angles, I felt pretty prepared. However, it was Robert Ebert’s How to Read a Movie that was the glue that brought all the ideas together. Ebert brings up a lot of basic ideas, such as right being positive and left negative, that most people probably noticed before but never truly applied it until he brought light to it. Reading his essay prior to watching my clip really helped me understand the purpose of each effect, such as lighting and the use of sound to heighten a mood. Here at my in-depth reviews!

The following part of this assignment is where all the action! There was some pretty fun trivial stuff, such as cool yet little known production facts about the movie as well as the genre. Speaking of genre, its something that I never put too much emphasis in before but a lot is dependent on it because a genre is what speaks to you. When you’re feeling down in the dumps and need to be uplifted, you look at the happy-go-lucky genre, or when you’re feeling like you need a scary movie, you look at the thriller genre. Here’s where I explored the different genre’s and where I even submitted my own to the DS106 Youtube genre list! We also got into combining and making movie clips, which is a lot cooler than it sounds, or maybe its not for everyone else but definitely for me! Surprisingly enough, I’m really proud of myself for making this. It’s sort of shitty but I made it all myself so it’s nice knowing what I’m capable of! Here’s my post on how I went deep into the trenches of 300 and all it has to offer!

This week also involved some planning for the upcoming week and all that we decide to do with it. What would a week really be if we didn’t go into the assignment bank? I ended up picking Make a MS Paint Video and Where are they now. For the first assignment, I plan on using Ke$ha’s hit song Tik-Tok as my inspiration and then How to Lose a Guy in 10 days for the latter. These two assignments appealed to me because they seemed like fun and creative ways to get my hands dirty with videos! For the first assignment, I plan relying heavily obviously on Paint but also MPEG to put the entire video together. I think of the two, it’ll be more time consuming but also the most rewarding. For the second assignment, I’ll mostly be using MPEG to edit interviews and paste them to see the then/now aspect but also be using GIMP for photographs of some people. For more on this idea, check it out here!

I decided to have some fun with my DC’s, which is nothing new, but also relate them back to the movie-theme of the next couple of weeks, or at least one of them! Here’s where I did my two DC’s!

Week ten down and over with! However, this is a bittersweet feeling, time flies a lot faster when you realize how much fun DS106 is and how helpful the techniques actually are!